JALPak

https://press.jal.co.jp/en/release/202307/007507.html

JAL will launch daily 787-9 HND-DOH service from summer 2024

joejones

Nice to see.

Back in the 1980s JAL was all over the Middle East...

CPH-Flyer

Another route where Qatar needs the capacity from partners. Like AA taking one of the rotations from JFK, Finnair doing CPH ARN and HEL, and BA took over a single rotation from LHR. Another way to manage the lack of aircraft.

dvs7310

Yeah, exactly as I suspected. At first I was quite excited to see this, thinking great, extra capacity, likely a little downward pressure on J fares, and more award seats. But it's likely just a replacement for a QR metal flight like what happened with HEL, no QR metal at all there anymore. Meaning biz award seats TYO-Middle East on this route will be just as difficult as now.

Plus JL biz compared to QR biz, even if it's just their blah seats and not Q Suites, not that JL is really bad, but QR is just so much better.

nomadabroad

But QR is already flying 2x daily to HND/NRT so they’ve already decided to add capacity ages ago, this might be very well another capacity boost after all

this may benefit JAL for onwards connection to Africa, Brazil and Argentina.

it would be interesting to see if JAL will keep its Helsinki flight, it’s no longer serving as an efficient connecting hub given the much longer flight times so might as well switch to Doha with the added bonus of much more connectivity options

AlwaysAisle

This was my first thought, too. JAL's return to the Middle East.

CPH-Flyer

Pre pandemic Qatar flew Narita, Haneda, and KIX. So they are just get back to prior levels.

But I'll take a wager that the QR operated Haneda rotation goes away when JAL starts flying.

Copenhagen had 2 daily Qatar rotations, enter Finnair on the market and Qatar had 1 daily. Helsinki had one Qatar operated flight, now there is a Finnair operated and zero Qatar. Same picture with AA and JFK. Same when Cathay started from Hong Kong, Qatar reduced the flights added by Cathay.

nomadabroad

let’s see, though it clearly says in the article that the existing QR HND/NRT flights are to stay and JAL will continue to codeshare on those flights. You can’t compare Scandinavian cities vs Tokyo, the latter much more high yielding and important to QR - flights have been consistently full.

My bet this is a capacity boost either way, by the time this starts (Summer 24) QR will likely to have stabilised its lack of fleet by then, the A350s are coming back faster than expected plus the 9x additional 77Ws brought in (ex-CX and VA) recently.

the Finnair agreement came at a time when QR was desperate before the grounded A350s came back, I wouldn’t be surprised if this would somehow end next year (they are probably bound under contractuals for X term to honour in the meantime).

CPH-Flyer

It actually says "The Tokyo=Doha flight operated by Qatar Airways will continue to be a codeshare flight." singular as opposed to plural.

One challenge is getting slots in Haneda. They'd end up with two flights departing more or less the same time, or before public transport is available in the morning.

nomadabroad

If we want to play semantics then the picture actually says Tokyo(Haneda/Narita) as routes operated by Qatar Airways.

QR announced resumption of HND + KIX ages ago despite lacking an aircraft back the , so we already know the decision being made re Scandinavia, Kuala Lumpur etc is to partly….enable them to restart more flights to China and Japan being a priority. Plus HND recently got up gauged from A359 to 77W.

joejones

That could be a translation error since Japanese doesn't distinguish between singular and plural most of the time.

CPH-Flyer

The biggest problem is really the slot times. JAL's day time slots are earmarked for countries, and it is anyway not like they have spare ones. So will the two flights depart within a couple of hours around midnight? I don't think so. But let's see....

nomadabroad

why not? The midnight departures from HND and morning arrivals into DOH connects nicely into GRU/EZE and the European/Africa morning bank departures. The late night arrival into HND allows for night departures from ex-Europe as well, the timings for NRT serves more on the morning/afternoon departures ex-EU.

If you look at key markets such as LHR it is common to have 2 QR flights leaving within an hour of each other (usually at night)

the AA flight from JFK departs an hour after the QR flight, quite common given the banked flights they just need extra capacity on specific time slots to maximise connectivity

joejones

The overnight flights are great if you can fly in business, especially connecting to QR short-haul at DOH since you get F lounge access (jacuzzi!)

That said, I am a little surprised at the dearth of daytime options to get from Tokyo to the Gulf; basically the only reasonable way is to connect through Seoul.

CPH-Flyer

London is a quite different market, QR currently has 8 flights a day to Heathrow, and also 4 daily flights to gatters.

I am not convinced there is the Haneda market to have to have both JAL and QR keep their routes.