Note: This is an update to a previous post to indicate that this flight is now bookable, and even has some award availability.
Western Australia sure is seeing a lot of growth with long haul flying lately, in particular with Qantas recently launching nonstop flights from Perth to London.
Late last year All Nippon Airways announced that they’ll launch daily nonstop flights between Tokyo Narita and Perth as of September 1, 2019. The airline will operate flights with the following schedule:
NH881 Tokyo Narita to Perth departing 11:10AM arriving 8:15PM
NH882 Perth to Tokyo Narita departing 9:45PM arriving 8:25AM (+1 day)
Note that if you were interested in this flight, it’s now bookable. ANA even seems to have one business class and one economy award seat per flight, should you be looking to redeem miles. I’m sure over time they’ll make even more award seats available.
ANA will be using a Boeing 787-8 for the route, featuring just 184 seats, including 32 business class seats and 152 economy seats (yes, these planes are really sparsely configured, especially when you consider they’re just in a two cabin layout).
ANA’s 787 business class
The flight will cover a distance of 4,919 miles, and is blocked at 10hr5min southbound and 9hr40min northbound.
With this route, ANA will become the first Japanese airline to fly to Perth, and for that matter this is only ANA’s second destination in Australia, after Sydney.
There are a few things I find especially interesting here:
- This could be a good option for those looking to travel one-stop between Perth and the US, but the schedule isn’t really optimized for US connections (since most flights from the US arrive at Narita in the afternoon)
- Mainland Chinese airlines have been expanding like crazy, but as of now the only mainland Chinese airline flying to Perth is China Southern
- Qantas flew nonstop between Perth and Tokyo until 2011, but ended the route at that point
Bottom line
Generally I think ANA is pretty conservative with their growth, so seeing them be the only airline to fly between North Asia and Western Australia is exciting. They’re certainly using the right plane for it — a 787 with under 200 seats — so I’m very curious to see how this pans out.
If you’ve been interested in booking this flight, it’s now bookable.
What do you make of ANA’s new flight between Narita and Perth?
A strange route for ANA given the (small) size of Perth and the total lack of feeder cities. Would have made more sense to triangulate with ADL to broaden the catchment.
Clarification: By eastern Asia I mean anywhere north of HKG.
ANA is also going to start service to Chennai, India, this winter—the airport where the leopard cub was rescued. This is southern India's first direct link to eastern Asia, along with a JAL flight to Bengaluru (also in southern India) that was announced at the same time and that will fly from mid-2020.
@19NIXXON91, could be, but there are also a lot of Australians (especially those from Perth) that head to Japan for skiing, in season of course. Otherwise, it's an important business link as well as plenty of tourists and people visiting family at other times of the year.
Surprising that JAL hasn't joined the bandwagon earlier with their close association with Qantas and OW alliance.
Yes so excited that we finally get a direct flight to Japan and even better on a Japanese airline. rumours had been floating around for a while about this so its finally good to have it.
Yet another route ignored by Australia's own, or should we say Sydney's own, QANTAS.
They just aren't interested in anywhere other than routes from Sydney. Perth - London is only flown bcause they can't do it non-stop from Sydney! Even Melbourne struggles to get Qantas international services!!!!
Lucky can you please include best way to use miles between the two cities? krisflyer, united etc?
Thanks
Pretty kool, Great news for Perth, excellent way to get to Hawaii..
Aussies love Japan so fast connections to the U.S wouldn't be crucial, most people would love a stop over i believe
ANA has a 777 with 504 seats with first class that should be your next review. And yes it does get boarded in30 minutes
Could this be a trial to gauge interest for the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020 ? I'm excited we may see other fairly new routes soon which cater to even more secondary markets.
"ANA will be using a Boeing 787-8 for the route, featuring just 184 seats, including 32 business class seats and 152 economy seats (yes, these planes are really sparsely configured, especially when you consider they’re just in a two cabin layout)."
@Lucky
ANA used to have an even more sparse configuration for their 787-8; 46 business and 112 economy, with the economy seats in 2-4-2, total of 158 seats. Too bad that it's...
"ANA will be using a Boeing 787-8 for the route, featuring just 184 seats, including 32 business class seats and 152 economy seats (yes, these planes are really sparsely configured, especially when you consider they’re just in a two cabin layout)."
@Lucky
ANA used to have an even more sparse configuration for their 787-8; 46 business and 112 economy, with the economy seats in 2-4-2, total of 158 seats. Too bad that it's gone now and all of ANA's 787 are 3-3-3 in economy :c
NH's only european destinations from NRT are DUS and BRU, and the only Star Alliance flights from Europe connecting to this new route are Swiss' from ZRH and LOT's from WAW, so i do not think this flight is aimed at European connections either.
It seems that ANA's strategy is capturing the O/D market between Japan and Western Australia and maybe some of Eastern Asia connections, but in either way, wouldn't it be better...
NH's only european destinations from NRT are DUS and BRU, and the only Star Alliance flights from Europe connecting to this new route are Swiss' from ZRH and LOT's from WAW, so i do not think this flight is aimed at European connections either.
It seems that ANA's strategy is capturing the O/D market between Japan and Western Australia and maybe some of Eastern Asia connections, but in either way, wouldn't it be better to start the flight from HND or schedule it to connect of North America flights?
Excellent news!
There is premium economy in ANA's 184 seat 787-8.
https://www.ana.co.jp/en/us/international/departure/inflight/seatmap/detail/b787_8.html#anchor002
How many points?