At the beginning of the year I wrote about the battle going on between Delta, American, and Hawaiian, over a slot at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. Delta had been granted a slot to operate a Seattle to Tokyo Haneda flight, though they weren’t using it within the spirit it was issued. The route had highly seasonable…
Continue reading: American & Delta Continue Catfight Over Tokyo Haneda
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Between this, the Love Field drama, and the end of interlining with AA, among other things, Delta sure seems to think that picking fights over trivial issues is a good use of its time these days.
Eh, if American operated from Haneda they'd keep forgetting to send ETOPS certified aircraft. On the other hand, if Delta operated their route to Haneda they'd find a way to get in a fight against Japan Airlines or ANA for competition. Give it to United and they'd operate it exclusively for some special people.
Let JetBlue get Haneda! 😛
@betterbub - Haha made my day!
But this is an awfully complicated fight for a trivial thing. Haneda is a fad at this point. More convenient, yes. But no one seems to want to fly there anyway. If this was for a slot at LHR I'd understand, but no one seems to be doing well at HND anyway.
They should award it to Alaska to codeshare with Emirates, just to watch Richard Anderson's head explode.
It's too bad if HND isn't doing well as it is infinitely more convenient than NRT in a lot of ways.
If neither airline really wants it, give it to Hawaiian. They were left out of this battle and can really use the slot every day.
AA had JFK-HND for a while and the route performed miserably. Personally, I prefer Narita anyway, as the skyliner train is very convenient and not that much slower than a taxi from HND.
For those that say no one wants to fly to HND..it depends where you're flying from. Within Asia, people are willing to pay a little more to fly into HND because it is that much closer to TYO than NRT. The airline I fly with....they want more slots but they're restricted to two flights a day.
For those that say DL is picking a fight with AA. It's AA that picked this fight with DL. AA was the one that made big promises saying they can operate this flight daily with a 772.
Just a question, why Alaska is not attempting a transpacific flight, in order to compete with Delta?
They should attempt ask AA for this HND slot and attempt a SEA-HND flight! I am sure they would do very well! And they are on good terms with AA, surely AA would rather this slot to be with Alaska than DL.
Planes wise, im sure they can buy or lease some from transaero. Lol. Or if the route is stronger than expected, get the a380s from MH.
flyingfish actually makes a really good point. AS operating a SEA-HND would probably do really well.
Interesting comments about Haneda vs. Narita!! As someone who lives in Tokyo, I can confidently say that the vast majority of residents here prefer to go to Haneda. Narita is not bad, it's just silly far away, whereas Haneda is right in the city. I begrudgingly make the trek to Narita when needed, but if there's a Haneda flight going where I need to go, I will pick it 100% of the time. I hope AA gets around to putting the flight on the schedule!
@flyingwithfish - "why Alaska is not attempting a transpacific flight"
Because you can't fly SEA-HND with a 737?
@flyingfish
Alaska might do well with passengers in Seattle, but it'd be hard to get Japanese passengers on the planes to Seattle. I live in Asia, and no one I've ever talked to has heard of Alaska Airlines. It'd be very cool to see a plane marked Alaska in an Asian airport though, so I'm not giving up hope yet!
American has confirmed that the issue is that they missed the deadline for a landing slot (they were not awarded the route until after the deadline). So they expect service to commence in April, 2016.