Dhiskusi Eksekutif eTN: Maskapai mega Jepang nyedhiyakake strategi

All Nippon Airways puts all its hopes into new runways at Tokyo airports. Jun Miyagawa, the airline’s director of corporate planning and assistant to chairman ANA, talks more about the goals of Japan’s mega-carrier.

eTN: What is All Nippon Airways’ strategy for the years to come?
Jun Miyagawa: We are increasingly concentrating our offer in Tokyo, at both Narita and Haneda airports. Haneda is dominant for domestic traffic and Narita is our main international hub.

eTN: Does this mean that you are reducing your activity in Osaka and Nagoya?
Miyagawa: We started to transfer a part of our intercontinental network from Osaka to Narita. It is a question of economic rational. Tokyo concentrates all the demand with 40 percent of the country’s population living in the capital. Neither Osaka nor Nagoya offer sufficient demand to sustain long-haul operations. We have recently boosted our connectivity out of Tokyo by offering more flights to China, Korea, the rest of Japan as well as Vietnam in connection with cities in Europe and the USA. We continue to offer however many flights out of Osaka and Nagoya to the rest of Asia.

eTN: Tokyo Narita is currently extremely saturated. Is it not contradictory with your ambitions?
Miyagawa: This is the case today but capacities will be released from 2010. We are indeed in the starting blocks to add more flights as Narita airport will then see the expansion of its second runway being completed and Haneda airport will have its fourth runway opened to traffic. The opening of this fourth runway will then create 80 new slots per day. As the government will also reopen the airport to international traffic, we look to offer more domestic and international routes. We will in priority serve routes to China and Korea but we also think of offering some flights to Europe. In total, we expect to serve seven to eight additional international destinations to our current flights such as Hong Kong and Shanghai.

eTN: Do you think that you could propose intercontinental routes out of Haneda?
Miyagawa: It would be possible to propose flights to Europe at nighttime with possible frequencies to London, Frankfurt and Paris. The airport is also very conveniently located, closed to Tokyo city center.

eTN: Any other developments in a near future?
Miyagawa: We seriously study the creation of a low fare airline, possibly in 2010. We look at all options, including a base outside Japan. However, I cannot disclose anything else for the time being…