The airport of Haneda has one major advantage: it is only 30 minutes by public transport from the heart of Paris. Tokyohub, compared with over an hour for the Narita. A strength that is also supported by the local authorities, as the Japanese government is helping Haneda to grow by releasing air slots. The recent award of 50 new slots will enable companies to nine countries to strengthen their presence in Haneda or to relocate there. These moves should generate seven million additional passengersbringing the platform's theoretical capacity to 25 million passengers on international routes.
All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines unveiled their expansion plans. ANA will begin flights to five new destinations, linking Haneda to Milan Malpensa and Istanbul, MoscowShenzhen and Stockholm. The airline also plans to offer routes already served from Tokyo Narita to San Francisco and Qingdao, China. The Japanese carrier has also announced that it is transferring its flights to Delhi, Houston and San Jose from Narita to Haneda, Seattle and Washington DC, while Sydney and Los Angeles will be served twice a day. In Vietnam, ANA will be positioning one of its two flights to Haneda on Ho Chi Minh CityThe Hanoi route will remain at Narita. This new distribution will make it possible to "enhancing the appeal of the Haneda hub"according to Seiichi Takahashi, Vice President of ANA. All these international flights operated by the airline will be relocated to next March in the terminal 2until now dedicated to domestic flights.
For its part, Japan Airlines (JAL) will transfer its Dallas-Fort Worth route to Haneda, as well as two daily flights to Honolulu. At the end of March 2020, the Narita - New York JFK and Narita-Chicago will also be redeployed to Haneda. In Europe, the airline is repositioning the Narita-Helsinki route at Haneda, in the same way as its partner Finnair. In the Asia-Pacific region, JAL will serve Delhi, Shanghai-Pudong, Dalian and Sydney from the airport closest to the centre of Tokyo.
Haneda is in fact the leading airport in the Japanese archipelago, handling 88 million passengers per year, including 18.5 million on international routes. However, the country's main air gateway remains Tokyo-Narita, with over 32 million international passengers.
