A Delta Airbus A330-900 at Tokyo Haneda Airport.
All three U.S. major global airlines have transpacific joint venture (JV) partnerships with Asian carriers that facilitate hub connections, but Delta Air Lines is the only one without a Japanese partner, making Tokyo an origin and destination (O&D) market for Delta rather than a transfer point.
“The way we serve Asia is through Incheon,” Bob Letteney, Delta’s vice president of international government affairs and policy, told the Japan International Transport and Tourism Institute Civil Aviation Symposium in Washington, D.C. “We do not have a Japanese partner … Unlike our competitors, we're not flowing a lot of traffic through Tokyo. So, 88% of our passengers get off the plane in Tokyo. Another 8% actually connect within Japan. About 96% of [Delta’s traffic to HND] remains in Japan, which is good for travel and tourism between our countries.”
The Delta-Korean Air JV also connects passengers to Japan via Korean Air flights from ICN to more than a dozen Japanese destinations. ”We have seen a huge, 40% increase in travel [from the U.S.] to Japan since 2019,” Letteney said.
That aligns with a broader rise in international traffic to Japan. Reiko Nakayam, the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s assistant vice minister for international aviation, told the symposium that an annual record of 36.9 million international visitors came to Japan in 2024, up 47% from 25.1 million in 2023 and 16% over 2019.
Delta serves HND from Atlanta, Detroit, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Seattle. “They're all major hubs, so you can get to Japan one-stop from across the U.S.,” Letteney noted.
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