Etihad's daily A380 from Abu Dhabi to Tokyo Narita is on-time only around 7% of the time, with delays averaging over 90 minutes. Why is this happening?
How un-Japanese of them… I recall, years ago, at SDJ, a JAL flight was a mere 15 minutes late; their agent came over the loud speaker to profusely apologize and offer airline credits. I can’t imagine being regularly 1-2+ hours delayed to/from a country that values time. EY flights must be filled with only foreigners.
Why ? Because they wake up late ?
Also take into account rotation as that aircraft isn’t in AUH. So many people never consider the fact the aircraft they are on was somewhere else before. Eg. LHR AUH NRT AUH HKG AUH NRT. If the inbound is late due to air traffic or tech, there’s a knock on effect.
Also take into account literacy as that detail is alreadt present. So many people never consider the fact the detail they said on was somewhere else before. Eg. "What can explain Etihad’s constant Tokyo Narita delays?" If you comment without reading, there’s a knock on effect.
Sometimes a long turnaround means the aircraft is not at a gate for deplaning and quick boarding. Years ago I took a Singapore airlines flight form JFK. Because the aircraft was at JFK for about 10 hours there was often a delay because there was no access to the gate due to other aircraft using the planned gate.
I was on that flight some days ago and arrived at around 3pm at NRT.
The plane did board late due to "late arrival of the aircraft" which sounded like an excuse. Then, after boarding completed, we sat at the gate for about an hour due to "airspace restrictions over Oman". Then taxi took a while with several minutes holding time. Takoff was around 0:30am.
This seems to happen almost every day. The thing is: EY already pushed back the arrival time from 12:45 to 13:30 about one week before. But even that seems unrealistic.
If anyone is booked on EY800: Just assume you will arrive at NRT around 3 to 4 pm.
Actually my first flights with EY and they made sure to leave a bad impression...
I took EY800 over the summer, and if I recall, the same thing happened to me: boarded mostly on time, but something about airspace restrictions over Oman as we waited at the gate. I think it was a good 45 minutes or so before we pushed back from the gate.
I am flying from Vienna to Narita with Etihad via Abu Dhabi on Nov.4th. As my layover is only 1 hour and 30 minutes i‘ll have more time to spend in the first class lounge and nothing to hurry for in Tokyo.
I flew this route on 19 September. I believe we landed in Tokyo with a four-hour delay or so.
When I was initially told the flight would be delayed upon arriving in Abu Dhabi to transfer to the Tokyo flight, I had assumed it was weather-related: a typhoon was going to hit Tokyo as we were making our way there. However, the lounge attendant said it was due to Chinese airspace restrictions, which the pilot, once we were onboard, also explained was the cause for the delay.
I wonder if the delay has something to do with needing to line up Omani clearance and Chinese clearance. The other routes you noted don't have to fly over China and so will only need to enter the Omani air routes.
Checking EY866 to shanghai and EY888 to Beijing it also seems to leave an hour late consistently, though this doesn't seem to lead to the same arrival delay as Narita.
Has anyone considered that there are 3 wars being fought in the region? Israel-Iran, Iran-Other Gulf countries, and Yemen-Saudi. I have a friend stranded in Saudi due to airports closed to international flights.
Waiting for cabin crew to pass sobriety tests???? Oh wait, that’s JAL.
I’m sure it’s sleepy Biden’s fault somehow. Right Gary?
Main reason is simply ATC delays from Oman airspace.
Most of the time, many flights from the UAE and its neighbours going towards Pakistan, Central Asia, and North East Asia would depart to the north and transit Iran airspace, which is currently closed so they must go East first. Many flights from Europe to India or South East Asia would normally use Iran airspace as well, but many are routing much further south across Saudi, UAE, and Oman. Therefore the airspace is extremely congested.
Airlines in UAE need to apply for slot times to leave UAE and enter Oman. If this flight has long ground time in NRT, Etihad won't prioritise the earliest available slot over a flight with a quick ground time, especially considering there are probably very few onwards connections from NRT.
The greatest difficulty in getting slots is on the more northerly routes, remember Indian airlines can't use Pakistan airspace so all flights to North India are occupying these northern Oman routes, and the greatest number of eastbound flights will use these routings as well. This explains why delays are worse to Japan than Singapore.
There were a couple of days when delays were extremely bad, some flights to SE Asia and Australia routed South through Oman and began flying Eastbound only once reaching Seychelles airspace, because it meant immediately available departure slots and only a slightly longer flight time, instead of a 3 hour delay on the ground waiting for the more northerly 'normal' routings.
As evidence supporting the “flight clearance” theory,
Flight EK320, which was added to the winter schedule during the same time slot, is also experiencing significant delays.