Japan earthquake related AA events / flight diversions
 

Thread temporarily a "sticky" and extends to all Japan earthquake and tsunami-related issues; the seismic event has been "upped" to 9.0Mw, the ensuing tsunami caused extensive damage and loss of life, as well as problems and possible containment breaches and ensuing radioactivity possibilities at and near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant 170 miles north. The US Dept. of State has begun voluntarily evacuating some American employees and family members who wish to depart Japan including Yokohama, Tokyo and Nagoya. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant emergency has been updated from a level 3 to a level 5 (Three Mile Island level), though not up to the maximum level seven (Chernobyl). You may wish to take all this into consideration in your travel plans.

Please try to keep this thread as useful as possible to members with travel plans by NOT posting extraneous information, comments, etc. (which will be deleted). Thanks!

Many, if not all, AA flights to/from Japan have restarted; some other airlines have cancelled flights to / from Tokyo, however. Use online or telephone resources to ascertain when your flights to Narita / NRT and Haneda / HND might be scheduled and the validity of your ongoing connections. Be aware many domestic flights remain cancelled in Japan, and that a number of rail lines and motor expressways remain closed, power usage has been severely curtailed (rolling blackouts are instituted in Tokyo) and various goods shortages exist, even in the Tokyo area. There are growing shortages and logistics disruptions and likely hundreds of thousands of homeless to be taken care of. The US State Department advises travelers to avoid non-essential travel to Japan for now. (FlyerTalkers report all is OK in southern Japan.)

Japan travel policy

As of Saturday, March 19, 2011 at 0445 UTC / Friday 2345 Central US / 1345 Saturday Tokyo:

1. If you are traveling to/from/through Tokyo, Japan Haneda (HND)or Narita (NRT) on March 11-18, 2011, and your ticket was issued no later than March 11, 2011, you may begin travel as late as March 25, 2011. Original inventory required? No; the ticket reissue charge will be waived for one ticket change. (NO changes here)

2. If you are traveling to/from/through Tokyo, Japan Haneda (HND)or Narita (NRT) on March 19 - April 10, 2011, and your ticket was issued no later than March 13, 2011, you may begin travel as late as July 10, 2011. Original inventory required? Yes; the ticket reissue charge will be waived for one ticket change. (Changes)

Worldwide reservations numbers <link>

AA flight condition check page

Narita Int'l Airport info (includes updated arrival/departure times)

Haneda Int'l Airport info (includes updated arrival/departure times)

Japan-Guide.com page on Japan conditions including transport and transport to / from NRT and HND <link>

US Dept. of State Japan Travel Warning and other earthquake and tsunami related information<link> as of March 18 (last notice published March 18):

"March 18, 2011

The U.S. Department of State warns U.S citizens of the deteriorating situation at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recommends that U.S. citizens who live within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant evacuate the area or take shelter indoors if safe evacuation is not practical. The State Department strongly urges U.S. citizens to defer travel to Japan at this time and those in Japan should consider departing. On March 16, 2011, the Department of State authorized the voluntary departure from Japan of eligible family members of U.S. government personnel in Tokyo (Tokyo Capital Region), Nagoya (Aichi Prefecture), Yokohama (Kanagawa Prefecture), and the prefectures of Chiba, Fukushima, Gunma, Ibaraki, Iwate, Miyagi, Nagano, Niigata, Saitama, Shizouka, Tochigi, Yamagata, and Yamanashi. Separately, because of infrastructure damage from the earthquake and resulting tsunami, voluntary authorized departure is authorized for the eligible family members at Misawa AB (Aomori Prefecture). This Travel Warning replaces the Travel Warning dated March 16, 2011. This Travel Warning replaces the Travel Alert dated March 13, 2011.

US Embassy contacts and services at Embassy and Consulates in Japan <link>

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...sendai_464.gif
Affected areas (BBC)

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...excl_464_2.gif
50 mi / 80 km exclusion area centered on Fukushima Daiichi plant recommended by US

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...yo_exc_304.gif
Radioactivity measurements around Fukushima

Fukushima update - BBC, April 1, 2011 (no fooling):

Fukushima update (1 April)

• Reactor 1: Damage to the core from cooling problems. Building holed by gas explosion. Radioactive water detected in reactor and basement, and groundwater
• Reactor 2: Damage to the core from cooling problems. Building holed by gas blast; containment damage suspected. Highly radioactive water detected in reactor and adjoining tunnel
• Reactor 3: Damage to the core from cooling problems. Building holed by gas blast; containment damage possible. Spent fuel pond partly refilled with water after running low. Radioactive water detected in reactor and basement
• Reactor 4: Reactor shut down prior to quake. Fires and explosion in spent fuel pond; water level partly restored
• Reactors 5 & 6: Reactors shut down. Temperature of spent fuel pools now lowered after rising high

BBC page on Fukushima Daiichi reactors plant (165 mi / 265 km north of NRT) issues <link> with links to other stories.

http://www.japan-guide.com/g3/0018_15.gif
Japan-Guide.com map to disruption

http://www.japan-guide.com/g3/0018_03.gif
Japan-Guide.com map of seismic and tsunami effect

Japan-Guide.com page on current conditions

Due the mag 8.9 earthquake off north east Japan.

The tsunamis are still rolling in. :(

The train systems are all down as well in Tokyo.

Also likely to see tsunami activity in Hawaii and possibly the West coast

Craziness!!

--wes

Nothing on AA.com yet.
Los Angeles also has tsunami warning for this morning @820 AM (LAX time)

I was booked on LAX-NRT for this morning and received notice at 1:45 am PST that my flight was cancelled and at 1:54 am PST separate notice that they were unable to rebook me.

I guess they can't rebook for today until the runways have been inspected.
I can't wait for the complaints from people because AA canceled their flights.
On Facebook, AA made an annoucement about employee and customer donations for Unicef, and some idiot says they should use some of the money to fix broken kiosks.

HND-JFK in the morning
 

We are supposed to be on the HND-JFK flight in about 10 hours. Since the plane that was coming in was diverted to AK, and they've already cancelled the JFK-HND flight for tonight, I'm not particularly hopeful. We called the EP line, and they said that no one has cancelled the flight yet, but that the folks in charge were probably still asleep.

According to the FT, "Tokyo’s Narita Airport, Japan’s main international gateway, cancels all flights for the rest of the day."

Don't be too hopeful. It's showing canceled on what I'm looking at.

I've been on ExpertFlyer looking at loads and flights are almost entirely zeroed out in all classes - ORD-NRT had three coach seats and that's about all I found today. Availability is out there in most classes tomorrow - but some gateways look to be coach only, others business only, C inventory for upgrades Y-J is available on some routes.

I'm canceling my trip - I have no need to be there in the middle of all this and I will reschedule for a time when I'm not going to be underfoot.

AA Japan policy posted
 

AA has issued a Japan waiver


Here's the info:

Japan Travel Policy
Due to the earthquake that has impacted Japan, American Airlines will offer its customers the convenience to change their travel plans as listed below.

If you are traveling to/from/through: Tokyo, Japan Haneda (HND)
Tokyo, Japan Narita (NRT)
On the following dates: March 11-14, 2011
And your ticket was issued no later than: March 11, 2011
You may begin travel as late as: March 18, 2011
Original inventory required? No


The ticket reissue charge will be waived for one ticket change.

To change travel dates or for questions regarding refunds or destination changes, contact our Reservations personnel at 1-800-433-7300 within the United States or Canada. If you are calling from outside the United States or Canada, please check our Worldwide Reservations Numbers page.

Sidebar... but what does AA consider "reasonable" as far as destination changes?

I've got my travel scheduled as:

home-LAX-NRT/HND-JFK-next-home

Where "home" would be my home airport (DFW) and "next" would be my next intended destination on this ticket (for work next Tuesday pm).

Considering the international segments on this ticket, I wouldn't consider it a comparable value to just go home to DFW and continue to my next destination on Tuesday. I also don't particularly want to skip NRT/HND and go onto my next destination for several days. So I'm wondering if I wanted to go somewhere else for the weekend (supposed to be a mini-break for me), would they fly me there? And if not, will they refund the value of the NRT legs and still keep my others intact?

If you thought you were going to Narita or Haneda (or arrive) be aware ALL public transport in Tokyo has been cancelled, people are walking home as far as 12 miles / 20 km. Dedicated overhead railways have been shut down and people have been diverted to them to walk home.

http://estb.msn.com/i/15/96DDC4252F2...7CE6EB2519.jpg http://www.phuketgazette.net/newsima...-1-pmECuAw.jpg
Commuters walking home on railways . . . . . . . . . . . . UA diversion from Narita to Yokota Air Base

A couple of our erstwhile FTers are on planes that were en-route when the earthquake hit. They've been touring both Yokota and Haneda so far, and sending emails. Sounds like less than fun. Two routings - JFK-NRT and LAX-NRT.

Cheers.

The answer is apparently NO and NO.

This is going to end up costing me more than the original ticket as after almost 90 minutes on the phone with the EXP desk, they can't figure out any way around the problem that this is a multi-leg rather than a round-trip and now that I've started travel, they can't suddenly remove or replace legs.

I have no desire to show up in Tokyo in the midst of a natural disaster. And AA can't get me there either. But they also can't offer me options on my other legs.

I am looking at the two AA 777s in ANC right now. Beautiful and rare site!

Haven't heard of any FTers stuck in ANC, but please PM me or beckoa if you are here and need assistance of any sort.

I can arrange ground transportation if you need me to. Please let us know if you need help.

(There's also supposed to be a UA 744 here, but it must be parked on the far side of the ramp.)

With six 777s now tied up in (or enroute to) Japan, I imagine there will be some knock-on effects of this event throughout the system, with a day or two of equipment substitution, and even flight consolidation/cancellation both to Europe and South America.

Any signs of this yet?

Yes, business can be rescheduled!^ The airports need to be utilized for emergency aid!

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's PWP wonderous device: BlackBerry9000/4.6.0.304 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

I'll do what I can- send me a PM, not sure how long AA's stay will be. But if any FTers were diverted to ANC let us know.

CXLs for 3/12 starting to go through
 

AA170 just cancelled. Presumably the rest of AA's NRT schedule is cancelled tomorrow as well. AA seems to have held out quite a while.

Cathay cancelled (hours ago) my HKG-NRT flight tomorrow so I'm staying far out of the way of those needing disaster relief (and travel relief) and going Cathay HKG-LAX on Sunday.

Good luck to everyone getting to where they need to be and thoughts with those affected.

All Japan bound AA flights are cancelled

Yep... and AA is not allowing "trip in vain" for those of us who already have started our journeys because it's international and not domestic. They were unwilling to give me much flexibility on my multi-leg trip so I basically had to cancel it and they did a re-fare to get me home. I lost the majority of the value on my 8 segment ticket (of which I had only used 2 segments, both normally cheap domestic segments).

Wow -- so no flts to anywhere else in Asia?!:eek:

Report from the battlefield at HND
 

From a Fellow FTer via email

Against the advice of one of the JL agents, we moved from the international terminal to the domestic. When we got here, we found lots of good empty cardboard boxes, fresh blankets and boxes of "Emergency Food." See, they're distributing this in the domestic terminal, not the international. They're trying to save their own first!

We've set up camp in front of the rental car counters. Corrugated cardboard foundation topped with a layer of blankets. We're drinking beer and eating bread out of a can. "Bread for Preservation" is what the can says; I'm wondering if they meant "Bred for Preservation."

We also each got three cans -- a green one, a brown one and a purple one -- with four paragraphs of Japanese characters written on them. "Emergency Food" is the only English translation. I don't even see the Japanese people eating whatever's in these cans.

Cheers.

Nope... and they were unwilling to send me home either without re-faring the ticket for today's "one-way" fare.

Natural disasters are definitely out of AA's control - but screwing over an many year's EXP 3MM? That does NOT sit well with me and I plan to be pretty vocal about their handling of this if it doesn't get fixed once they can get their own policies sorted out.

Yes, I would think their 'priority' would be to get people out of 'harm's way' and not 'fleece' them in the process, esp. when you are given 0 options!:eek:

Safe travels, techgirll!

Thanks for sharing!:)

I noticed they have opened this up a little. You can now rebook travel starting as late as the 18th and are willing to rebook you for travel starting as late as the 25th. I really think they need to open this up a little more though. Japan is going to have aftershocks for weeks and the state department is recommending to avoid traveling to Japan for the rest of the month.

Luckily both NRT and HND are far from the epicenter that there’s not much damage to those airports. Of course that doesn’t mean they’re going to start opening up flights anytime soon.

The worst damage was at SDJ (Sendai Airport) which is the closest airport to the epicenter. The tarmac was completely swept away by the wave of tsunami that hit it as seen in this horrific video: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d28_1299830727

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/...0_1846677i.jpg
Telegraph photo of SDJ / Sendai

Yikes! I flew from NRT to SDI a few years ago. It was definitely drier then.

Cheers.

What did they do with all the planes? Did they just fly them all away? How did they do that if the runways were wet?

Japan - AA flights to NRT Canceled today.
 

AA today canceled ALL their flghts to NRT today. Saturday all flights from NRT have been cancled except AA 60 to DFW.
Some flights from U.S. on saturday are canceled.
check aa.com status.

Some DL flights from U.S. to NRT did fly today.

Cars and light aircraft are now flotsam on the runway and elsewhere, at SDJ.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...11500993-1.jpg

On the bettah news front, Hawai'i has experienced surge and water over the breakwater walls, but no serious issue so far, so presumably AA ops to the Islands are okeh.

"Water rushed onshore in Honolulu, swamping the beach in Waikiki and surging over the break wall in the resort but stopped short of the area's high-rise hotels.

Waves of 6 feet high were recorded in Maui, and 3 feet in Oahu and Kauai. Officials warned that the waves would continue and could become larger, but a scientist at the tsunami warning center said it didn't appear that they would cause major damage in Hawaii, according to the Associated Press."

I had worked so hard to plan this vacation after collecting so many miles / points over the years. We are currently booked in F / J class from DFW - JFK - HND and back with outbound travel to begin Mar 15. I was also able to use my Citi TY points to buy 4 economy tickets and get them upgraded to intl J for the entire family going and coming back and was also able to use my Marriott / Hyatt points to book stay at very nice hotels. However, now we are debating if it would be wise to even take this trip.

Also, I called AA and asked about the refund / cancellation policy and was informed that since I purchased discounted economy tickets i will be issued 4 seperate vouchers one in each traveling person's name.

First question is would you recommend cancelling this trip for now. Also, can these travel vouchers be used piece meal at a later date e.g. if the voucher is worth $1000 can it be used to purchase a $800 ticket and then a $400 ticket by paying additional $200 or any other permutation / combination. Also, does the voucher have to be used for the exact same person or can it be used to purchase a ticket for anybody.

The big concern is the aftershocks! So, you need to decide what your party is willing to deal with, in terms of 'comfort' on your vacation! More information will be available as each day unfolds. Also, it depends on where you are planning to go in Japan. GL!^

not sure about the others, but it looks like yesterday's AA153 is coming back to ORD from ANC.

Today is March 11th, and personally, with some flexibility in mind, I would watch and see what happens the days to come, contact the hotel to determine it's OK (early next week) as well. Look at the map above, and you can see where the epicenter was; the Kanto area is pretty well planned and built due to Japan's high level of earthquake consciousness and preparedness; I suspect inspections will reveal most transport infrastructure is OK and usable, and most buildings are fine as well.

You will have booked, confirmed seats, and I do not suspect the flights will be cancelled at this point. I certainly could be wrong, but I've weathered severe typhoons and the like in Tokyo and everything bounced back to normal pretty quickly. (Electricity in some locations, some foodstuffs - those may experience interruptions; in the northern area, Fukushima, Morioka, Sendai etc. I'd surely cancel.)

I've not used vouchers too much, so I recommend the thread on vouchers (Advanced Search, titles, threads only,) for the skinny on vouchers.

Was supposed to be on today (saturday, march 12) flight 170 NRT-LAX

And since I had no access to internet nor phone until this morning, when I called to rebook, the earliest flight that they could put me on was for the 15th! (and it's a connecting flight in HNL with a six hour layover)

any suggestions as to how to get on an earlier flight? I've been traveling for nine months and was really looking forward to going home!

i'm flying on an award ticket, business class.

As you can imagine, things are in a bit of a mess right now and everyone is trying to figure out the impact on the airport, flights, and schedules. My suggestion is to grab what you can now and then keep calling back to see if anything opens up between now and the 15th.

No it's not.

Per AA Japan: http://www.americanairlines.jp/intl/...ws20110311.jsp

Flights flying today (12MAR LT) out of Japan
AA168 NRT-JFK
AA60 NRT-DFW

CANCELLED
AA134 HND-JFK
AA176 NRT-DFW
AA170 NRT-LAX
AA154 NRT-ORD