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Japanese airline ANA has announced that it will be using two of the three daytime slots it was recently awarded at Tokyo’s Haneda airport to commence flights to New York and Chicago.
Haneda is the more convenient of the two major Tokyo airports thanks to its proximity to the city centre but the airport currently only assigns eight slot pairs for travel to destinations in the US and all of those slots pairs fall between 11 pm and 6 am.
As things stand, the timings of the US departures from Haneda mean that only Hawaii and the West Coast are served – attempting to serve cities further east would see aircraft arriving at uneconomic times of the day (very late at night/very early hours of the morning) – but, from late October, airlines flying out of Haneda will be able to offer flights to the East Coast that depart and arrive during the day.
ANA is planning to make the most of the new rules by scheduling services to New York and Chicago but, as of yet, no firm date has been set for the commencement of the services and not flight times have been provided either.
ANA already offers services between Tokyo’s Narita airport and both JFK and Chicago airports but, nevertheless, the addition of flights to/from Haneda will be welcomed by travelers tired and bored of the often laborious journey between Narita and downtown Tokyo.
Award Travel With ANA
Back in 2015 ANA moved from having a distance based award charts (like British Airways) to zone-based award charts (like American Airlines) and, with that change, a lot of the generous routing rules that ANA had went out the window.
Still, the new award charts have their positive aspects to them.
Awards on ANA
- North America – Japan – Round trip, Business Class costs 85,000 miles (regular season pricing) and 75,000 miles (low season pricing).
- Europe – Japan – Round trip, Business Class costs 90,000 miles (regular season pricing) and 80,000 miles (low season pricing).
- Europe – China/Hong Kong – Round trip, Business Class costs 95,000 miles (regular season pricing) and 85,000 miles (low season pricing).
How ANA defines Low, Regular and High season can be seen here (it varies depending on route) but here are the seasons for travel to/from Europe and the US:
Awards on Partner Airlines
- North America – Europe – Round trip, Business class costs 88,000 miles.
- Europe – Africa/Middle East – Round trip, Business Class costs 68,000 miles.
While ANA doesn’t have seasons with partner awards there is a separate issue. ANA levies fuel/carrier surcharges on a number of partner awards airlines and this can affect the cost/viability of the award considerably. Fortunately the surcharges levied on awards booked on United Airlines are low so that’s often a good starting point when looking for an ANA partner award.
Bottom Line
ANA is a transfer partner of American Express and Starwood’s Starpoints convert to ANA miles as well (both convert at a 1:1 ratio) so there are ample opportunities for anyone wishing to build up a balance of miles with ANA.
The new routes between New York/Chicago and Haneda will be good value awards in the low and regular season so it will be interesting to see what award availability is like when these routes are up and running.
