TokyoHaneda.com – Your Gateway to Japan

Hokkaido International Airlines better known as Air Do, a Sapporo-based low-cost carrier, earlier this week has announced its plan to commence twice daily flights from Tokyo Haneda Airport to Tokachi-Obihiro airport to begin in March next year. Adding Obihiro to its network of flights, mainly concentrating on flights to cities in Hokkaido, it will be its fifth connecting Tokyo and Hokkaido. Air Do currently operates services from Tokyo to Sapporo (New Chitose airport), Hakodate, Asahikawa and Memambetsu.

The flights will be operated using its latest Boeing B737-500 aircraft, brought into service earlier this month, with a seating capacity for 126 passengers. Air Do now has a fleet of 2 aircraft types consisting of Boeing B737s and Boeing B767s. AirDo and All Nippon Airways have been long-time code-sharing partners, where ANA sells seats on all flights operate by Air Do.

Until 2002, the Haneda-Obihiro sector was served by 2 companies, Japan Airlines and Japan Air System, however after the merger of the two companies left JAL being the sole carrier on this route with no other carriers to compete against for a number of years. It is now hoping that the new entrant could spur some competition, to help raise the service level and bring down the fare, benefiting the users. The additional flights will help revitalize the local economy and stimulate demand for air travel.

The flight schedules have yet to be released while it is currently pending the approval by the relevant ministies.

ANA Group has recently announced its Corporate Plan for fiscal year 2010 , which runs from April 1, 2010 to March 31, 2011. With the lethargic nature of economic recovery and the bankruptcy filed by Japan Airlines earlier this week, the trend of slow recovery for the Japanese aviation business is likely to continue.

2010 will be a year of expansion for ANA. Factors such as anticipated capacity increase at Tokyo’s Haneda and Narita airports, with the scheduled delivery and being the launching carrier of Boeing 787, as well as Open Skies between Japan and the United States, will bring business opportunities for ANA to expand.

ANA expansion will be carefully monitored and in parallel to the market and its demands. Listed are some of ANA plans;

Routes from and to Tokyo, Haneda
ANA will expand international routes from Haneda, starting with the introduction of the new Haneda to Taipei (Songshan) route, as well as increasing the frequency of Haneda to Seoul (Gimpo), Haneda to Shanghai (Hongqiao) and Haneda to Beijing during the day. ANA is also considering night-time operation for routes to the West Coast of the United States and Southeast Asia.

For domestic routes, ANA will increase the frequency of the Haneda to Okinawa route from August 1 to October 31, and is considering the reopening of Haneda to Tokushima route in conjunction with the expansion of landing slots in Haneda airport in March 2011.

Realignment of routes in Hokkaido
ANA will shift its 5 routes (14 flights/ day) that operate between Okadama (Hokkaido) and other local airports inside Hokkaido to New Chitose airport (Hokkaido). New Chitose airport connects Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan, to a number of other cities in Japan, and this shift will capture the demands of customers from Hokkaido to access outside the prefecture more efficiently.

Have a press release and would like us to publish it? TokyoTomo welcomes your submissions. If you would like to submit your new product, service or other industrial news for review by our editors, please write to pr@tokyotomo.com TokyoTomo does not necessarily guarantee coverage of every new product or release however as long as it is relevant to travel in Japan, we will try to include them.