US major United Airlines has opened reservations on its new daily link between San Francisco and Tokyo Haneda following the recent green light from the US Department of Transportation (DOT) of its application to serve Tokyo’s downtown Haneda Airport from San Francisco International airport in California.
The Department launched a proceeding to award the newly available Haneda opportunity after American Airlines informed the DOT that it would be ending its New York-Haneda service at the end of last year. Under a US-Japan agreement, US airlines may operate a total of four daily round-trip flights per day at Haneda Airport, where operations are limited.
Up until now the four flights have been operated by Hawaiian Airlines from Honolulu; Delta Air Lines from Los Angeles and Seattle; and, until December 2013, American Airlines from New York (JFK). The Department determined that United’s San Francisco-Haneda service proposal would “provide the best use of the one available opportunity” and awarded it the rights ahead of an application by Hawaiian Airlines to serve the Japanese airport from Kona, Hawaii.
The DOT found that United’s proposal “would introduce a new US carrier at Haneda” and would “promote competition” by giving business and leisure travelers “an additional choice for connecting service to Haneda” via United’s well-established San Francisco hub.
United will inaugurate the new route on October 26, 2014, subject to final government approval. Haneda Airport will be the tenth trans-Pacific destination that United serves nonstop from San Francisco, and the third new Asia-Pacific airport - also including Taipei and Chengdu - for United this year. It will be operated with a Boeing 777 configured with 269 seats - eight in United Global First, 40 in United BusinessFirst and 221 in United Economy, including 104 United Economy Plus extra-legroom seats.
"We are excited about adding Haneda Airport to our global route network," said Jim Compton, vice chairman and chief revenue officer, United. "By providing nonstop service from our San Francisco hub to both Tokyo airports, we will maximise choice and convenience for customers traveling from across the Americas to Tokyo, and to points beyond on our joint-venture partner ANA."
United customers traveling on the new Haneda flights will be able to make one-stop connections at the San Francisco hub to and from 28 cities throughout North America and beyond. In addition, the new service will provide connections at Haneda on the extensive network of United's joint-venture partner ANA to other international destinations, including Bangkok and Singapore.
To accommodate the new route United will reduce the frequency of its existing twice daily link between San Francisco and Tokyo's Narita International Airport to just a single daily rotation. The airline also offers daily services to Tokyo Narita from its hubs in Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York and Washington.
United is the largest carrier at San Francisco International Airport, offering nearly 300 daily flights to more than 90 destinations in the U.S. and around the world, more service than any other airline from the Bay Area. It currently operates nearly 30 daily nonstop flights from San Francisco to 21 international destinations from its San Francisco hub, while it offers more nonstop trans-Pacific service to and from the United States than any other carrier hub, a network that will grow when a new link from San Francisco to Chengdu, China is launched next month, pending government approval.
In our analysis we look at non-stop air capacity between North America and the Asia Pacific region over the past ten years. In that period capacity has increased 27.4 per cent, reaching just under 20 million one-way seats in 2013, up 2.1 per cent on the previous year. Throughout this period United has been the largest carrier with its share of non-stop capacity increasing from 13.5 per cent in 2004 to 14.8 per cent in 2014.
The chart below highlights the largest airlines offering non-stop services between North America and Asia and Australasia during the past ten years by seat capacity.
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