The US tourism and travel industries are planning to introduce non-stop flights between Los Angeles and Tokyo as they realize that there is an untapped market between these two destinations. According to MIDT data cited by the US airlines there are more number of passengers flying from Tokyo to Los Angeles than other US cities including Chicago, Boston, Houston or Portland all of which have non-stop flights to Tokyo.
Currently there are no non-stop flights operating between Los Angeles and Tokyo, passengers flying between these two destinations have to fly via one of the US cities or via Seoul on Korean Air’s Las Vegas flights.
Looking at this untapped market American Airlines proposed to have non-stop flights between Los Angeles and Tokyo Haneda. Tokyo has two international airports: Haneda International Airport and Narita International Airport, most flights flying out from the US generally land at Narita International Airport. Haneda is a more preferred choice of airports between the two because it’s only 45 minutes away from the city unlike Narita which is 1.5 hours away. All International flights from the US to Haneda are constrained while they can freely land at Narita International Airport.
The Las Vegas Haneda proposal was just rejected by the Department Of Transportation however the department is tentatively considering the airlines’ other proposals of operating flights from other US cities to Haneda. Some of these proposals are for increase existing flights to Haneda and some for moving existing flights from Narita to Haneda.
The US Department of Transportation has tentatively rejected AA’s proposal of flying from Las Vegas to Haneda mainly for two reasons first, there are non-stop flights to Haneda from other US cities: Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Washington D.C, there is no need for passengers to fly via Las Vegas to reach Tokyo and second, the Las Vegas to Tokyo route proposal was American’s least priority among all its proposals.
It has been learnt that American may want to fly non-stop between Las Vegas and Tokyo Narita but is not revealing much information on this. A spokesperson of American said “We’ll continue to evaluate the market and make the best decisions for American and the customers.”, reports forbes.com.
Forbes.com reports Friday that the rejected Las Vegas to Tokyo route would have been operated by American as part of its joint venture with Japan Airlines, which used to have operations to Las Vegas and sees a possibility of Japan Airlines resuming operations to Las Vegas from either Tokyo Haneda or Tokyo Narita. JAL is also planning to launch a low cost / hybrid subsidiary ZipAirTokyo very soon which will commence its operations in 2020 with plans to cover flight operations in the western part of the US.
