CPH-Flyer

I doubt that JAL is planning to send the A350 to Honolulu. The A350-900 are for domestic flights, and the A350-1000, once they start arriving, are supposed to replace the 777-300ER. The latter could of course change, since we have not seen the planes yet and other options may still be ordered. My guess is with the new US slots in Haneda JAL may places their bet on flying from Haneda to Honolulu, a thing that the A380 for practical reasons are cut off from, and compete with ANA in that way.

I do doubt ANA are clear winners on this, they did not buy these planes because they particularly wanted them. They bought them to get control over the bankruptcy of Skymark and keep the Delta investment and influence away from Skymark. Also, to get control over Skymarks haneda slots. A price that made the A380 worth getting, and then trying to figure out what the devil to do with them. Seen individually, I doubt the A380 will make money for ANA, seen in the prospect of the bigger purpose, it was probably a sound price to pay.

The CAPEX in lounge and planes, and the many extras for Y (only launch period features?) does make this an expensive route to operate. The premium cabin pricing is not set high to recover that, and considering that a big chunk of the seats are probably sold bulk to tour operators, I would expect that the yield on the route is not brilliant. But the marketing looks great.

CDG1

I did not look at JAL and what their use of their A350s will be.

I quoted Skymark in my post without going into details. The details were known and made available to all on aviation websites at the time.

They certainly had a genius idea on what they were going to do with their A380s. This was not a first try for ANA. There was the incredible "Marine Jumbo" in fact two of them in different designs,, the Pokémon Jets, and the Starwars 777s. All of them a gigantic success, some being assigned limited markets, others flying all the routes.

Even at the test flight center in Toulouse they all admitted that the Flying Honus came with the most stunning livery they had ever seen on any and all the delivered A380s.

I see the flying Honus on the Hawaii route being a success for the years to come as there will be nothing equivalent between Japan and Hawaii. I very much doubt Japan will award any traffic rights to other airlines A380s between NRT and Honolulu.

Hawaii is practically an almost all Japanese tourism destination. The islands are making their daily bread from Japanese visitors. Most Europeans won't even consider it due to the distance and cost. They rather go to the Carribean Islands. It's a lot cheaper for them. The rich French (and even less rich) go to French Polynesia or New Caledonia for some of them.

Not knowing the ratio that's being sold to tour operators, I prefer not to comment on something I don't know about.

Those who want to fly to the islands cheaper have a lot of choices (all classes considered). If they find ANA too costly they have other airlines they can fly with, either direct or with plane changes.

The competition is wide open and this is what competition is about. Hawaii is a popular tourist destination, the market is wide open.

The Flying Honus will get my vote. I did not find the lower deck Economy was bad at all. Premium was nice and more airy but I thought normal Y is quite livable for a 7 some hours flight. I flew on both, one way each so my comparison is legit.

It was all a really nice experience. I have inaugurated the very first A380 passenger flights and other A380 with other airlines. I would place the Flying Honus are rating at the very top.

Wasabi Tofu

By the way, are we talking about economy class price of A380 of NH in October ?

97750JPY
24Oct NH184 (A380)
31Oct NH183 (A380)

97550JPY
06Nov NH184 (A380)
12Nov NH183 (A380)

are bookable.

CDG1

I am taking this from a sister aviation website. They are well informed geeks and a trusted source https://www.airliners.net/forum/view...tion#p20969979

CDG1

Converts to 803,00 Euros which is quite reasonable. I would certainly not complain considering the quality offered on board and then the planes!

I paid 700+ Euros for my one-way HNL-NRT inaugural return 24 May in Premium Economy. I used air miles for the NRT-HNL inaugural leg.

Shop and compare!

Unimatrix One

I bought J tickets to HNL on the A380 for my whole family in December, and NH was cheaper than all other airlines in J on those dates. (I actually wanted to fly HA, but NH was cheaper.)

CPH-Flyer

I am not suggesting the Y product is bad, or not worth flying. I am just doubting whether they can actually make money with the current service levels. They will have three of these planes to fill, the block hours for them will be pretty low unless they start sending them to Okinawa, or somewhere, in between the Honolulu flights. These are expensive birds, and they are expensive to operate. Sure Airbus likes to talk about the per seat costs, but if they can't fill those seats and they can't fill them in a quite high block hour count, it is really hard to make money on them.

CDG1

ANA would not have launched this exclusively Hawaii 3-planes operations with their A380s if they did not think it would be both successful and profitable. They know what they are doing and I am sure the future will prove them right.

A proper market research / analysis was conducted by ANA before they decided on the launch. It's not only about flying fun original Hawaiian style designed A380 to these beautiful tropical islands much loved by the Japanese.

Maybe they will even lease or even buy other A380s in the future... ? Time will tell.
I wish them long term success with this fantastic product. I believe it's feasible.

Whoever decries the A380 for whatever reason can always go to the competition and choose other aircraft. There's plenty of airlines and products to choose from between Japan and the Islands.

747FC

You are correct about Japanese nationals representing a very significant part of the Hawaii tourism scene, but it would be a stretch to say that "Hawaii is practically an almost all Japanese tourism destination."

As the first figure in this piece shows, https://dbedt.hawaii.gov/visitor/dai...senger-counts/ , tourism from the USA is slightly over-represented.

CPH-Flyer

There is indeed only one thing to say, time will tell how the financial success of the A380 operations will be. I am sure that ANA has done the math, and put the planes were they see the best option for a positive ROI. But the key point is they did not do the math on the route, and then decided to buy the plane. They had to buy the plane, and then figure out where they could potentially make money on it.

I don't choose a flight based on the aircraft, I don't really care what plane I am on. The A380 is not going to move me either way in my purchase decision, nor is a paint scheme. I would like to try the new F cabin, but I am waiting to find a redemption, so ANA will not become rich on that curiosity. The schedule, the service/carrier, and the price in that order are my main factors.

I overheard an interesting conversation on a flight recently. A lady from a Korean tour group commenting to the cabin attendant about various aspects about her flight to and from South Africa. The fun thing is, she did not realise that not only was she on a different plane type for the return, she was actually on a different airline. A lot of passengers care far less about the plane types and airlines than we FT posters can possibly imagine.
​​​​​

LIH Prem

Not being forced into the wiki wiki shuttle like we are in the Diamond Head wing is a feature of the new gate. Not a negative. That's why they used that gate.

It's a huge plus compared to arrival in the Diamond Head wing.

I can't imagine how they would handle the passenger load if they had to use a Diamond Head gate. There must be a contingency plan for that but I hope nobody here has to experience it.

-David

sodaisei

I don't think you get my point.

Of course there are some dates where you can book a Tokyo - Honolulu flight on the A380 for 100.000 yen. The problem is that those are few selected dates and it is still way more expensive than a direct flight in a different carrier. Most of the dates it costs double to book a A380 round trip flight to HNL than to use another carrier or aircraft. That is why I dont know if this is just me being cheap, or that ANA prefers selling these in packages, because I dont see the point of spending double just to ride the A380

HenrySu1220

Since they have the courage to run 3 A380s flights on this route, I think the market might just be good. I am not a Japanese, but from my understanding, Hawaii is a kind of place extremely popular for japanese tourists. If the market is simply great, they do not have to actually worry about the price. Also, I did also sometimes scan the price, I think it is not expensive at all, I also sometimes could see they sell their first class round trip a 3500 usd which is really a huge incredible deal(though I will still purchase award tickets which was even much cheaper).

HenrySu1220

Also, for this route I am not familiar, but for the China-US routes, I do have friends they purchased more expensive tickets simply because they heard good things about ANA and they just wanted to fly ANA, let alone ANA on a A380. (I even decided to transfer at NHL to Tokyo instead of direct fly to Tokyo because of this).
Not everyone is searching tickets like us, actually majority of them first look at the airline website they heard about instead of starting from the search engine, they might want to book a cheap deal, but they do not know how to.

Torode

It seems like a lot of the price hike you are experiencing is because you left the booking too late considering the popularity of that particular aircraft/route. There would have been cheaper fares available earlier for those exact flights, but those fare buckets have already sold out.

If you look at the Friday Oct 11 flight, for example, only the expensive booking class U is available. It's indicative of how popular the particular dates you want to fly on are. And if you look at the Korean Air option on that same date, which of course requires a transit back in Seoul and is therefore less attractive, the ICN-HNL leg is extremely lightly loaded at the moment, which would in-part explain the much lower fares they are asking.