Los Angeles to Tokyo is already a very busy market, with 8x daily flights, operated by American (2x daily), ANA (2x daily), Delta (1x daily), Japan Airlines (1x daily), Singapore (1x daily), and United (1x daily). It looks like this market is now getting a ninth daily flight.
ANA has just announced that as of October 29, 2017, they’ll add a third daily flight between Tokyo Narita and Los Angeles. Presently ANA operates daily flights from both Tokyo Haneda and Tokyo Narita to Los Angeles. The new flight is expected to go on sale as of Monday, July 3, 2017 — hopefully we see lots of award seats on the new flight.
ANA’s newest frequency will be operated by a Boeing 777-300ER, featuring eight first class seats, 52 business class seats, 24 premium economy seats, and 166 economy class seats.
The new frequency will operate with the following schedule:
NH176 Narita to Los Angeles departing 4:00PM arriving 8:40AM
NH175 Los Angeles to Narita departing 10:20AM arriving 3:20PM (+1 day)
This complements ANA’s existing daily frequency between Narita and Los Angeles:
NH6 Narita to Los Angeles departing 5:00PM arriving 9:45AM
NH5 Los Angeles to Narita departing 11:25AM arriving 4:25PM (+1 day)
As well as their daily frequency between Haneda and Los Angeles:
NH106 Haneda to Los Angeles departing 10:55PM arriving 3:50PM
NH105 Los Angeles to Haneda departing 12:05AM arriving 5:25AM (+1 day)
As well as the daily frequency of their joint venture partner, United, between Narita and Los Angeles:
UA33 Narita to Los Angeles departing 5:30PM arriving 10:30AM
UA32 Los Angeles to Narita departing 10:50AM arriving 3:45PM (+1 day)
What’s interesting is how all three flights between Narita and Los Angeles belonging to the joint venture arrive and depart around the same time, within 90 minutes of one another. I guess that’s not too surprising, given how banked most flights at Narita are. Still, you’d think there would be value in maybe having one flight at a different time.
On the surface this route seems like an ideal candidate for one of ANA’s A380s. Many airlines understandably prefer operating smaller planes and spacing out frequencies to give travelers as many options as possible, but with flights operated so close together, an A380 sure seems more efficient.
ANA will take delivery of their first A380 in early 2019, though has indicated that the plane will fly primarily between Japan and Hawaii. I’m curious if that strategy changes over time, and maybe they fly one to Los Angeles.
What do you make of ANA’s third daily flight to Los Angeles, and do you think there’s any chance they’ll operate an A380 to LA?
I'm flying ANA First Class this upcoming Sunday and it did show a 1:20am departure from LAX last I checked.
I flew SAS ARN-LAX June 2nd, and we parked at the remote gates. I returned to ARN June 18th, and we once again used the remote gates. SAS flight times are during mid afternoon peak hours, but still, it leaves a horrible impression starting and ending a trip at these gates. I saw a few other airlines out there, like Etihad and Air Fiji, so it seems like there's a big capacity issues at TBIT at the moment. The new midfield concourse can't come soon enough!
@Lucky
"On the surface this route seems like an ideal candidate for one of ANA’s A380s. Many airlines understandably prefer operating smaller planes and spacing out frequencies to give travelers as many options as possible, but with flights operated so close together, an A380 sure seems more efficient."
...and that's why you're a travel blogger and don't work in network planning.
SQ also flies LAX-NRT and v.v.
KE also used to fly NRT-LAX
Thai, Malaysia and Varig all flew NRT-LAX back in the late 90s so it was even busier market back then.
@Davis - Lol good catch. United's 787 configs are tight and the 77W is even worse! It has 116 more seats than ANA's config.
did you get the schedule right? is this winter schedule and summer schedule?
@Jason - I was referring to LAX to Asia; not NRT intra Asia
@Todd- what UA asia bank of flights are you talking about? United doesnt have an Asia bank of flights at NRT anymore - they've gotten rid of them completely.
Wow, that is a VERY premium heavy plane. Two less seats than a UA 787-9!
LAX is not a mega-hub for any airline and as such requires very specific connections to make international flights work versus having a throng of flights arriving from everywhere to fill planes to Asia. Those connections will be built around UA's asia bank of flights and NH either connects into those or flies half full. On top of that, TBIT is probably at or over capacity throughout peak times of day which also hinder NH's...
LAX is not a mega-hub for any airline and as such requires very specific connections to make international flights work versus having a throng of flights arriving from everywhere to fill planes to Asia. Those connections will be built around UA's asia bank of flights and NH either connects into those or flies half full. On top of that, TBIT is probably at or over capacity throughout peak times of day which also hinder NH's efforts to pick different flight times. 2x 777 vs 1x A380 is a good argument if you ignore the cargo hold. 2x 777 in the ANA configuration can take a fair amount of cargo which you don't have to feed and generally doesn't complain or have feelings that can be hurt.
@Jason, ANA has stated that their A380s will have an F cabin, so they aren't ignoring premium traffic either!
Didn't Garuda also state they are planning to start LAX-NRT this summer? (As part of LAX-NRT-CGK?) I wonder what the status on that is.
No way they'll operate the A380 to LA. They're configuring them as high density beach market airplanes with tons of coach seats. Not the premium configuration that the LA market can sustain.