Japan Airlines Adds Six Haneda Flights To The US

When it comes to Tokyo Airports, Haneda is significantly more convenient than Narita, since it’s closer to the city. Historically a majority of long haul flights have been into Narita due to Haneda being significantly slot restricted, but that has slowly been changing.

For example, recently US airlines got access to an additional dozen slots at Haneda Airport, which were distributed between American, Delta, Hawaiian, and United.

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Japanese airlines have also been granted an additional 12 Haneda slots for US flights, and those have been equally distributed between All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines. In a separate post I wrote about how All Nippon Airways will use their six US slots, and in this post I wanted to look at how Japan Airlines will use their six US slots.

Japan Airlines Adding Six US Flights From Haneda

With the recent changes to Haneda slots, we will see Japan Airlines add six new flights to the US out of Haneda. Most of these will replace Narita flights, though that’s not the case across the board.

Let’s take a look at the details.

JAL’s Dallas Flight Moves From Narita To Haneda

As of March 29, 2020, Japan Airlines will be shifting their daily Dallas flight from Narita to Haneda. The new flight will be operated by a three cabin 787-9 with the following schedule:

JL12 Haneda to Dallas departing 10:55AM arriving 8:25AM
JL11 Dallas to Haneda departing 10:55AM arriving 2:20PM (+1 day)

The new flight is expected to go on sale as of November 26, 2019.

Japan Airlines’ 787-9

JAL Eventually Goes Double Daily To Chicago

Currently Japan Airlines flies to Chicago daily out of Tokyo Narita.

As of March 29, 2020, Japan Airlines will be shifting their daily Chicago flight from Narita to Haneda. The new flight will be operated by a four cabin 777-300ER with the following schedule:

JL10 Haneda to Chicago departing 11:45AM arriving 9:30AM
JL9 Chicago to Haneda departing 12:25PM arriving 3:35PM (+1 day)

The new flight is expected to go on sale as of November 26, 2019.

Japan Airlines’ 777-300ER first class

However, in the case of Chicago they’re not just shifting the flight from Haneda to Chicago, but the plan in 2021 is to add a flight from Narita to Chicago. So essentially they’re just suspending their Narita to Chicago service for a bit under a year.

As of February 15, 2021, Japan Airlines will operate a three cabin 787-9 daily between Narita and Chicago with the following schedule:

JL56 Narita to Chicago departing 6:00PM arriving 2:50PM
JL55 Chicago to Narita departing 10:40AM arriving 3:00PM (+1 day)

I’m a little confused about that — will the plane really sit in Chicago for 20 hours every day?!

This new flight won’t go on sale for a while, given that it only launches in about 15 months.

JAL Adds Haneda To Los Angeles Flight, Maintains Narita Flight

As of March 29, 2020, Japan Airlines will launch a new daily flight between Haneda and Los Angeles. The new flight will be operated by a four cabin 777-300ER with the following schedule:

JL16 Haneda to Los Angeles departing 5:00PM arriving 10:50AM
JL15 Los Angeles to Haneda departing 1:45PM arriving 5:20PM (+1 day)

The new flight is expected to go on sale as of November 26, 2019.

Japan Airlines is also maintaining their Narita to Los Angeles flight, but they’re downgrading it from a four cabin 777-300ER to a two cabin 787-8 as of March 29, 2020. That flight will operate with the following schedule:

JL62 Narita to Los Angeles departing 5:20PM arriving 11:15AM
JL61 Los Angeles to Narita departing 1:05PM arriving 4:40PM (+1 day)

JAL Goes Twice Daily On Haneda To New York

Currently JAL flies twice daily to New York, once out of Haneda and once out of Narita. As of March 29, 2020, Japan Airlines will operate twice daily between Haneda and New York with four cabin 777-300ERs. The new Haneda flight will operate with the following schedule:

JL4 Haneda to New York departing 6:30PM arriving 6:25PM
JL3 New York to Haneda departing 1:30AM arriving 4:45AM (+1 day)

Japan Airlines’ 777-300ER

JAL Shifts Two Daily Honolulu Flights To Haneda

Japan Airlines flies 4x daily from Narita to Honolulu. As of March 29, 2020, the airline will shift two of those daily flights to Haneda. These flights will both be operated by three cabin 787-9s with the following schedules:

JL74 Haneda to Honolulu departing 9:00PM arriving 9:20AM
JL73 Honolulu to Haneda departing 12:05PM arriving 3:20PM (+1 day)

JL72 Haneda to Honolulu departing 9:55PM arriving 10:15AM
JL71 Honolulu to Haneda departing 3:45PM arriving 7:30PM (+1 day)

Japan Airlines’ 787-9 business class

Bottom Line

Japan Airlines will be adding six new Haneda to US flights. Of those, four are direct replacements of Narita flights (two Honolulu flights, one Dallas flight, and one New York flight), one is an addition (the Los Angeles flight), and one is a replacement that will eventually be a supplement (the Chicago flight, as the Narita flight is essentially just being suspended until 2021).

As I said with ANA, in general this shift to Haneda is good news for those actually visiting Tokyo, while it’s generally bad news for those connecting beyond Japan. The Haneda flights aren’t banked as well as the Narita flights were, so this won’t be ideal for connections.

It does seem to me like Tokyo is becoming less of an international hub for connections, and that’s probably largely because Chinese airlines have taken over so much transpacific market share due to their capacity dumping.

What do you make of Japan Airlines switching many of their US route network to Haneda?