Well your prediction was wrong. :p
I woke up to the schedule change this morning. Instead of leaving at 12:10 AM I now leave at 5:25 PM, so the daytime slots have been switched over. Funny thing is my itinerary though that the schedule change clearly didn't fix. Instead of leaving at 12:10 AM on Saturday and arriving Friday evening, I leave on Saturday evening and arrive on Saturday morning, but my LAX-SEA connection on AS is still on Friday. :eek: Hopefully a call sorts this one out quickly enough. :)

Consider the 5:45 pm departure time "tentative" until DL actually has their slot assigned.

Well it will probably be around that time, I'd assume. Either way it gives me an extra half-day to day in Japan for touring and such. :) (which I realize I could get by switching my flight if the award space opened up but DL did that for me without even having to search for it). However, I imagine most people affected by this change would be looking to switch to the calendar day prior.

Wasn't it already established that the current HND nighttime slot holders would automatically receive daytime slots for the winter 2016/2017 schedule? But that a whole new bidding process was in place for the summer 2017 schedule?

The prediction that I said was "wrong" was for when the schedule changes would be implemented into the schedule. :p From this thread I KNEW my flight times would change - I just didn't know when it would actually be reflected in my reservation so that I could make changes as necessary. A posted predicted those changes likely wouldn't be seen until summer time. They rolled out last night though with the tentative times. :)

I figured Delta "jumped the gun" for two reasons. 1) They just announced the elimination of LAX-NRT starting in the winter season. So people flying to Tokyo will only have one nonstop choice from LAX to book going forward; and it's better for DL to start mirroring what would be close to the eventual LAX-HND flight times. And 2) It's a lot easier to have people book under a tentative schedule that's going to be a lot closer to the eventual flight times than it is to continue with bookings under the old schedule, which would then be a schedule change of several hours versus one or two. Just look at your schedule change. It was either moving your departure up seven hours or back seventeen. And you'll still probably have another schedule change. Although much closer to your currently new flight times.

On the plus side, any changes this far out give me that much more time to play with options (not that I'd expect to have severely limited options for February by June/July). But at least this change means I can start working options now. The way I see it my current options are
1) Keep what I have (well, with fixing the current negative connection in LAX since I now land in LAX on Saturday morning but still have the original connecting flight on AS which departs on Friday night)
2) Ask to switch to the NRT-SEA nonstop
3) Ask for a crazy routing such as NRT-DTW-SEA to get the 747 on NRT-DTW.

To be honest, of the three I'm not sure which options I'd prefer. All have pros (and the only "con" IMO for option 2 and 3 is having to go out of NRT versus HND).

The airlines filed their answers on Thursday; here is DL's answer:

https://www.regulations.gov/contentS...ontentType=pdf

Here is the docket if you want to read the other filings:

https://www.regulations.gov/#!docket...-OST-2016-0048

Airlines filed their replies yesterday; here is DL's reply:

https://www.regulations.gov/contentS...ontentType=pdf

Here is the complete docket:

https://www.regulations.gov/#!docket...-OST-2016-0048

AA came out swinging and administered a beat-down to DL. Entertaining reading.

I expect the DoT to make its decisions by the end of July.

There's some pretty good stuff in here ... Like when DL says AA has "partner amnesia" when it conveniently forgets that they have a codeshare with KAL too.

I guess these things get almost as ugly as a prez primary.....but not quite

HA got the night slot for KOA/HNL service, over DL's objections. It will be interesting to see if HA also gets a day slot for HNL service. And I'm betting HA gets a day slot, too. That leaves 4 remaining for the 7 applications from three carriers.

Why do you think HA gets the day slot as well? HNL/KOA are leisure markets. I could care less who gets the slots, but HA is doing fine with the night flts HND-HNL.

Does UA and AA already have partner carriers flying USA-HND? ANA and JAL. DL has no partner. DL should get 2 slots. We shall see. :)

I disagree, DOT refused to give KOA-HND to HAL twice before and it was solely because of the leisure market KOA-HND caters to. I think HAL realised the best chance of serving KOA-HND, at least in the short to medium term, was to split up the operation between KOA and HNL. At least HAL will be able to fly to TYO 11 times a week with resuming service to NRT. I'd be very surprised if DOT gives HAL another slot to fly to HND 11 times a week. With NH switching HNL-HND to daytime, it pretty much ends any chance HAL has of receiving a daytime flight. Two daytime flights on LAX-HND is one thing. Eighteen daytime frequencies per week on HNL-HND, a market that exclusively serves Hawai'i, well lets just say DOT's priorities would have to change overnight for that to happen.

It would be 14, not 11.

Really? Why? Wouldn't the same argument have been valid previously with the limited slots when NH & JL were also flying it at night?

Maybe, maybe not. The case made by HA is that the economic interest to the US from these flights is in the form of inbound tourism rather that outbound business. And it has some strong numbers.

Sure, HA's existing flight has some strong numbers, but that flight benefits zero percent of the American traveling public. Quite frankly, the US government didn't negotiate valuable HND rights (especially daytime rights) so that a leisure-oriented airline in HI could use those rights to fly Japanese tourists to the islands. Especially when HA could obtain the same economic impact and benefit if it chose to fly from NRT.

These very limited frequencies' highest and best use is to enable US business travelers (whose destination is Tokyo) to use the preferred Tokyo airport.

If the US business-centric legacy airlines (the US3) had all of the HND daytime frequencies they desired, then there would be no sin in permitting HA to use some for its tourist market. But there aren't enough daytime frequencies to go around, and the US traveling public's interests should prevail over interests of the HI-bound Japanese tourists.

Personally, I don't think there was any chance from the very beginning that HA would get a second frequency, and the DoT required all airlines to re-apply for their existing gateway frequencies as a convenient way of denying HA a daytime frequency. I also don't think the DoT had any intention of denying UA, AA and DL their existing west coast frequencies. Basically, the only open question, IMO, is who gets the other two.