ANA Doubles Frequencies to New York

Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways (ANA) has announced it will increase the number of flights it operates between Tokyo Narita and New York John F Kennedy International from seven flights a week to 14. This change will allow ANA to capitalise on the growth in demand for connections between Asia and North America and will start from the beginning of the Northern Winter schedule on October 28, 2012.

The increase in flights to New York reflects ANA’s strategy to accelerate the expansion of its international network, which is a key pillar of its FY2012-13 Corporate Strategy. It also further strengthens ANA’s business model as a network carrier focusing on both long distance demand and demand for connections. Looking ahead, ANA intends to focus on the increased demand for connections between Asia and North America, and not exclusively those routes between Japan and Asia/North America.

This announcement follows the recent news that ANA will open two new international routes this year, between Tokyo’s Narita Airport and Yangon, Myanmar (from October 15, 2012) and between Narita and Delhi, India (from October 28, 2012). ANA is currently the second largest international operator from Japan, by seat capacity. This month it is scheduled to operate 1,576 flights from the country (10.5 per cent of total departures) offering just over 407,000 seats (10.9 per cent of total available capacity).

ANA launched operations on the Tokyo Narita – New York JFK route in April 1991 entering a four-way competition with its local rival Japan Airlines (JAL) and US carriers Northwest Airlines and United Airlines. The US operators may now have switched to American Airlines and Delta Air Lines over recent years but competition has remained fierce, with American Airlines closing its daily service in June 2012 as part of its network restructuring while under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

In 2011, an estimated 351,000 O&D passengers travelled on the route, an 18.2 per cent decline on the previous year. During this 12 month period ANA actually boosted its own share of the traffic by one per cent to 26 per cent and also reported a significant 15.1 per cent rise in average ticket prices, showing an improved yield but also taking into account the additional operating costs of the long-haul link. During the first five months of 2012 estimated O&D demand was up 16.0 per cent on the same period last year, but remains down 4.6 per cent on the first five months of 2010.

In the table below we show capacity developments on the route over the past 30 years which highlights how this airport pair reached its peak in 2003 and has seen capacity decline in eight of the subsequent nine years. Last year annual available seat capacity fell below 500,000 seats in each direction for the first time since 1985.