I noticed landing at NRT on AA that all of the AA 777's seemed to land right after us. I assumed this was to compress NRT AA ops into a fixed time frame. All planes in and all planes out as quickly as possible.

I know that I am NOT the target market and that there probably aren't a lot like me but ...

A different departure time from the USA would be ideal for me. Assume approximately 24 hours [including layovers] for WAS - MNL/SIN/BKK. A 10 PM departure would result in a 10 PM +1 landing [in departure city time]. Add in the 12/13 hour time difference and one is landing at 10 AM/11 AM +2 [arrival city time]. Clear immigration, collect checked baggage and clear customs, taxi ride into city or out to beach resort and one arrives shortly before check-in time at the hotel. Arriving at 11 PM + is just plain inconvenient, in my opinion.

With this kind of schedule I could avoid having to take a day off from work in order to catch an outbound departing at 12:00 [noon] or earlier.


One the way back to the USA a 6 PM departure is about ideal. Arrival is at 6/7 AM. Clear immigration, collect baggage and clear customs, take car to work.

With this kind of schedule I could avoid having to take a day off from work because the flight arrives late in the work day.


Some of the above timings are available.

Actually this is because HND departure/arrival of international flights are limited to late night and early morning except for a few Asian destinations (Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, and maybe Taipei). Otherwise you'd be able to connect to virtually everywhere in Japan from HND, while the domestic network from NRT is very limited.

NRT is a highly slot restrictive airport that only has two runways. It has to do a lot with eminent domain problems with the farmers in the surrounding area when they first built NRT in the late 1970s.

To give you an example of how bad it is to expand NRT, there are still property owners living within NRT compounds who flat out refuse to move out.

If you look at Google Maps, you can see that there's actually several houses and farming fields right in the middle of the taxiway because some of NIMBYs just outright refuse to move out. You rarely see this as you pass by these homes because the farmers erected giant tall fences from being visible from the taxiways.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=35.76...t=h&gl=us&z=18
http://maps.google.co.jp/maps?q=35.7...f62aad4,0&z=16
http://maps.google.co.jp/maps?q=35.7...3d9c613,0&z=19

Narita and GoJ basically has no other choice but to wait until these farmers die of old age and cross their fingers that the beneficiaries of these lands would be better people to deal (buy out) with so as to better align their taxiways and hopefully build new runways to increase capacity. As it stands now, NRT only has two runways, which is ridiculous for the needs as a gateway to Japan and Asia. Obviously, it's a no brainer that most airlines would prefer going to ICN instead as the more preferably hub and gateway to Asia.

For more history between Narita and the NIMBY farmers, watch the youtube video, or google "Sanrizuka-Shibayama United Opposition League."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6VXAb_RS2k


Simply put, NRT does not have the ability to have flights come in anytime they want. It has to be slotted. Hence, all flights from North America arrive and depart at the same time slot. Same with flights to/from Europe, etc.

If Japan were more like Communist China, they would just force the standouts out at gun point and bulldoze their homes and farmlands without pay. That would be a far simpler solution than waiting decades for this to be resolved.

Not to go off topic, but that is bs, plain and simple.

And yes, the timing issues for NRT may seem restrictive for such a large hub, but it seems to work fine for them.

I see no one has answered this yet, so I will. The folks at HND claim that the airport is too crowded to allow TPAC flights to arrive or leave except during those awful hours.

Everyone I know (including me) doesn't believe that explanation. We all believe it is done to protect Narita. If people had a choice between the same time for arrival and/or departure between NRT and HND, no one would pick NRT and NRT could well go out of business.

As others have pointed out, the real reason is that long haul flights to/from HND are only permitted to operate between midnight and 6a.