This would kill JAL and thereby destroy whatever semblance of competition exists in the Japanese airline market. All the local business travelers would switch to ANA.

Basically it's a supply and demand problem, I think.

1. There are more international flight options at HND now then there were back then. Therefore, less need to send people through NRT.
2. The vast majority of foreign visitors are going to either Tokyo, Kansai, or Hokkaido. Relatively few want to fly into other areas through Tokyo.
3. Outbound traffic is depressed due to the weak yen. The domestic LCCs at NRT are mostly serving penny-pinching local O&D passengers.
4. Most Japanese outbound travelers want to go to places that are served from HND, so again, less need to send people through NRT.

I don't think JL does their route, fleet, and operating carrier planning based what bookings they will get from AAdvantage or AVIOS.... :)

If Shizuoka gets their station on the maglev, it will run right under the airport, getting from Shizuoka airport to Tokyo will be faster than from Narita.

But I don’t think the long haul traffic into NRT is that much less than it was 5-6 years ago, even as HND’s international options have expanded. And the late afternoon domestic NH flights out of NRT seemed to be consistently well occupied back then. Yet vast majority of those mainline domestic flights have been axed now. There are a dozen NRT to HND limo buses scheduled just within 3-6pm time slot each day so there’s clearly a large number of NRT pax having to do the intl to domestic transit.

I really don’t even know that Jpn’s domestic aviation strategies strictly follow supply and demand, either. So many of the domestic NH flights out of HND seem to have such low load factors. A lot of the CTS flights I take are only half full.

That's probably another reason, actually. JAL and ANA have a bunch of HND slots that can only be used for domestic flights, and with loads fairly low, it makes sense for them to force international connections onto those flights rather than offering a separate bank of NRT flights.

Whilst they are still an unabsorbed entity, Asiana REALLY ramped up their capacity for Europe and Tokyo in the past year. Sadly for the folks starting from Europe (and the USA), there are few options for getting to HND without an Incheon-Gimpo transfer. Asiana flights to Haneda mostly depart from Gimpo, Asiana flights to Narita depart from Incheon.

Happily I’ll have the chance to fly to NRT in an A380. Sadly I’ll be arriving at NRT in an A380.

JAL's domestic load factor in FY23 was 76%. Not great, but not as bad as it could be. Pre pandemic they were hovering around 80% so a bit of recovery still to go. I need to see if there is a split between JAL and JTA, RAC, HAC to get closer to understand what the Haneda performance is.

[QUOTE=LapLap;36215795]Whilst they are still an unabsorbed entity, Asiana REALLY ramped up their capacity for Europe and Tokyo in the past year. /QUOTE]

Except Scandinavia....

Why fly to HND via Seoul when there are so many nonstop flights from Europe and North America and the Middle East? Seoul is more useful as a connecting point to secondary cities in Japan, and those are all served from ICN...

Cost.

If cost is an issue, then just fly to NRT and spend an extra half hour on the train, or tack on a ULCC ticket to some other destination in Japan...

???
“Happily I’ll have the chance to fly to NRT in an A380. Sadly I’ll be arriving at NRT in an A380.”


The point I was making is that Haneda and Narita co-exist with other nearby hubs and those hubs have their own idiosyncrasies and policies.
One might expect an onward “near-regional” flight dispersing transcontinental passengers to go to HND, but Asiana send flights from ICN to NRT.

Only downside for me personally will be arriving on this next occasion at NRT customs at the exact same time as 500+ flight companions. But NRT seems a much better place to accept A380s than HND.

That may be the explanation but again it sure is a poor solution. Force a bunch of pax into a bus trip across the bay lugging their own luggage.

Ive done this a bunch of times, my wife is gonna do it again this summer. We keep doing this over taking a chance with LCC from NRT.

According to this, the load factors for NH flights out of HND were 74.2-81% for ITM, 69.5-79% for CTS.


https://sky-budget.com/2024/01/12/ana-data-nov2023/



https://sky-budget.com/2024/04/08/ana-data-feb2024/

I would’ve expected lower number for HND-CTS. But ~75% is still not great, and yet NH has almost 30 flights daily on this route.

About 5 years ago, I flew NH from Naha to HND. Was a 777 and the economy cabin had less than 10 people asides from us.

Actually there are ICN-HND flights late at night, on three carriers (KE, OZ, and Peach).

HND restricts A380 operations due to traffic and space limitations, which has effectively stopped airlines from offering regular A380 service there. I have seen conflicting information on the details, but the gist is that A380s can only arrive and depart during non-peak hours, and the airport can only accommodate one A380 on the ground at a time, which means any kind of irrops would be a total disaster.

The A380 restrictions does make me wonder why they even made a gate with 3 boarding arms. But yeah, even Emirates have given it a pass to use A380s to Haneda even if their flights do fit the hours of operation restrictions.