In 2024, Japanese Star Alliance carrier All Nippon Airways (ANA) launched AirJapan, as a new subsidiary. The intent was that the airline would operate Boeing 787-8s in an all-economy layout. ANA insisted that AirJapan wasn’t a full service or low cost airline, but instead, would combine the best of both worlds while also featuring Japanese-style…
Continue reading: ANA Ending AirJapan Subsidiary (Not To Be Confused With ANA’s Air Japan)
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Binter Canarias plays this weird game as well. Your flight could be operated by Binter, Canarias Airlines or NAYSA but all aircraft are in Binter livery.
Was AirJapan trying to be like JALWays from yesteryear? I feel like ANAs A380s are being used just like JALWays were with their 747s.
Even more confusingly, their 3rd 788 just went into cabin fit at the beginning of October....
AirJapan was not a separate company, but rather a brand that Air Japan Co., Ltd. operated. Basically, Air Japan crew operated on both the AirJapan and the mainline ANA flights on occassion.
Air Japan owns and operates all of ANA 787s for international flights (domestic 787s are directly operated by ANA) and seems like it will continue so. ANA has also decided to transfer all their B738s to ANA Wings some time ago.
Who wouldn't want "Japanese-style ideas and quality"... (side note, which 'ideas' exactly? Hopefully, more like Mitsubishi *cars*... not A6Ms.)
Funny that there’s not a mention of ZIPAIR Tokyo in the article, JAL’s equivalent of AirJapan, and supposedly the one it was supposed to compete with. In fact, ZG has been quite successful flying its ‘basic lie-flat business class’ to places like Singapore and North America, so I wonder how ANA couldn’t replicate what JAL did so well with ZG.
Could not compete with ZipAir which is awesome.
Fly them within Asia frequently. The flights are mostly full and people are happy with them and free quickish WiFi which is unheard of in Asia.
Ambitious roll out of ZipAir by Japan Airlines that has been successful.
Just like you said, it seems like the key point of ZIPAIR'S success was these no frills lie-flat seats. Compare that to the AirJapan B788s with all-economy layout. I've seen their initial plan for AirJapan where ANAHD planned a two-class layout for the brand, but that shifted away for some reason.
Hmm, not 100% sure about the Air Japan thing - all of the flights operating as Air Japan up until March 26 seem to be showing as operated by ANA after March 27? Or did Google Flights get confused? (e.g. HND-HKG)
Air Japan once existed to circumvent Chinese ban on airlines serving Taiwan - while ANA flies to mainland China, Air Japan served Taiwan - like British Asia Airways or Air France Asie.
Air Japan failed to attract customers as their avg load factor sticks around 65% in 1H 2025 - much lower than ANA and pretty low for Low Cost Carrier, IMO.
Other than the flights sold as NQ xxx, all the flights are flown under ANA brand and seat/inflight service etc are based on ANA standard. Pretty confusing.
We flew Air Japan twice, loved it and had planned to fly it at least twice a year. Gonna miss it and hope they'd reconsider ceasing it. Won't travel on overpriced ANA or terrible Peach.
Probably they could make it work if instead of an all economy layout they also had a premium product similar to ZipAir’s flatbed and if had focused on less saturated and highly competitive routes.
Air Japan is "overpriced ANA." He wrote an entire article about it. Air Japan is not going away.
I wonder if part of the reason for the termination is also that they don't see where to get the planes for the expansion. JAL got in at better time. And with the A35K deliveries, and the ability to still keep some 77W around JAL is in a better position to move some aircraft to Zip