American Adding New York To Tokyo Haneda Flights

Several weeks ago, American Airlines was granted slots by the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) to operate a new nonstop flight between New York and Tokyo Haneda. A few days ago, American published the details of the new route. There’s now an additional update, as the flight is on sale, so I wanted to cover all the details.

American will offer New York to Tokyo Haneda service

As of June 28, 2024, American Airlines will launch a new route between New York (JFK) and Tokyo Haneda (HND). The new flight will operate with the following schedule:

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New York to Tokyo Haneda departing 11:25AM arriving 2:30PM (+1 day)
Tokyo Haneda to New York departing 4:30PM arriving 4:35PM

The new 6,772-mile flight is blocked at 14hr5min to Japan and 13hr5min to the United States. American will use a Boeing 777-200ER for the route, featuring 273 seats. This includes 37 business class seats, 24 premium economy seats, and 212 economy class seats.

This flight is now on sale. However, unsurprisingly, there’s not much in the way of saver award space or upgrade space.

This will be American’s third route to Tokyo Haneda, as the airline otherwise serves the destination from Dallas (DFW) and Los Angeles (LAX). I’m curious to see how American performs in this market:

• Admittedly New York to Tokyo is a big market, with a lot of demand between the two cities
• Currently All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines each operate two daily flights between New York and Tokyo, while United operates two daily flights between Newark and Tokyo
• For some time, American had a big growth strategy in New York thanks to a partnership with JetBlue, whereby JetBlue would provide feed for American’s long haul flights; however, that partnership was discontinued

While I’m not surprised to see American trying to launch this route, I’m not convinced this is going to prove to be terribly lucrative. I mean, who in their right mind would fly American when they could instead fly with All Nippon Airways or Japan Airlines, which offer an infinitely superior experience in all cabins (aside from those looking to upgrade, redeem miles, etc.)?

American will have a higher cost structure than other airlines in the market, while probably also being at a revenue disadvantage. But then again, this is part of a joint venture, so maybe that makes it work. For what it’s worth, Japan Airlines intends to maintain its two daily flights in the market as well.

American beat United for these Tokyo Haneda slots

For some background, Tokyo has two major airports — Narita Airport (NRT) and Haneda Airport (HND). Haneda is much more convenient for those visiting Tokyo, but historically most long haul flights have operated to Narita. However, Haneda has increasingly been opening up slots for long haul flights, which airlines have been very excited about.

Back in 2019, the DOT was in a position to award US airlines a dozen additional slots for Haneda (Japanese airlines were offered a similar number of slots). The DOT is supposed to award these based on what’s in the best interest of the public, so airlines try to make the case for why a particular route is in the public’s best interest.

Those 12 slots ended up being split between four airlines, including American, Delta, Hawaiian, and United. These slots have a “use it or lose it” clause, meaning that if an airline doesn’t operate a route for which it was granted a slot, it will be allocated to another airline.

Due to the pandemic, the DOT had allowed airlines to delay launching these flights. That dormancy waiver ended as of October 2023, and Delta chose to give back some slots, as the airline didn’t operate the Portland to Tokyo Haneda route that it was granted rights for.

Following that, the DOT invited US airlines to make their case for why they should be awarded these slots. The requests were from American and United, and frankly neither airline had a terribly compelling request:

• United wanted to add a Houston to Tokyo Haneda route; however, that route is already served by joint venture partner All Nippon Airways, and United would cut its Houston to Tokyo Narita route, so there would be no net increase in capacity
• American wanted to add a New York to Tokyo Haneda route; while that route is already served by joint venture partner Japan Airlines, at least American would be adding incremental capacity to Tokyo

So while neither request was terribly exciting, there was more merit to granting these slots to American. It’s just too bad the airline didn’t decide to add service out of another hub, which doesn’t currently have a direct link to Japan.

Bottom line

As of June 28, 2024, American will launch a new daily flight between New York and Tokyo Haneda. This will be American’s third route to Tokyo Haneda, and the only route from the East Coast of the United States.

It made sense for the DOT to award this service to American over United’s proposal from Houston, though I’m still not convinced about the economics of the route. American will have limited connectivity, and a worse product and higher costs than other airlines in the market.

What do you make of American launching New York to Tokyo flights?