The Nikkei Asian Review reports that ANA will buy 3 Airbus A380’s, ostensibly to boost the airline’s service to Hawaii.
This is fantastic news, as ANA will eventually join the 13 Airbus A380 operators, which could make for an interesting dynamic, as Airbus has been seeking new customers and orders of the double decker aircraft.
The part that confuses me though, is ANA’s intent to operate the A380 on the relatively short flight between Japan and Hawaii:
About 1.5 million people fly from Japan to Hawaii in a given year, filling 80-90% of seats per flight on average among all carriers. The A380 can seat more than double the passengers of ANA’s existing aircraft bound for Hawaii, which would help the airline increase its share of travelers.
I get that ANA wants to increase their capacity to Hawaii, but, doing some brief research, it isn’t clear to me that either Honolulu International Airport, or Maui’s Kahului Airport are truly ready for regular A380 service. Looking at the Hawaii Airports Modernization Plan, it doesn’t look like they have put in any A380 gates, nor is it in the plan. In 2005, the US Department of Transportation stated that Honolulu Airport had not expressed any interest in supporting A380 operations. So far as I can tell, a Qantas A380 did land in 2012, however, its not clear to me that Honolulu was properly provisioned for the aircraft. That’s further supported by this second article.
Overall, this is an interesting development, but I’m still trying to figure out whether or not we will really see A380 service to Hawaii. I would imagine that this is not an insignificant investment for Hawaii Airports, but then again, its certainly not cheap for ANA to buy the aircraft.
They had to take the A380s headed for Skymark in order for Airbus, a key creditor, to sign off on ANA taking control of the bankrupt Japanese carrier. So stuck with A380s, they need to go somewhere. ANA didn’t really want A380s, but they did want Haneda slots…
@Gary – fair point. I guess the part I’m not seeing is using them for Hawaii service. It’s a fairly short flight (comparatively speaking), whereas ANA could service JFK (assuming loads justify it) and differentiate themselves from JAL, among other destinations.
I sorta figured they’d use it on a domestic r0ute. 4 of the world’s busiest passenger routes are Japanese domestic routes to/from Tokyo.
I imagine they prefer 2 frequencies on NRT-JFK rather than 1 condensed frequency, it’s more options with which to pick up premium traffic. Besides, it would take 2 A380s just for the NRT-JFK route since the flight is too long to do with a single aircraft.
On the other hand, I could imagine NRT-SFO with their joint venture partner United downgauging their flight to a 787 in order to avoid adding too much capacity into the market. You can do that flight with a single aircraft, and there’s not a meaningful time differentiation between existing ANA and United service.
ANA really doesn’t want these planes. They aren’t going to have enough of them to get economies of scale operationally. They don’t earn a revenue premium from them, with passengers willing to pay more to fly them.
I wouldn’t have *guessed* HNL but they have 2 Air Japan NRT-HNL 767 flights now and a HND-HNL 767 flight of their own. If they condensed the 2 Air Japan frequencies ex-NRT, and operated in a regional configuratoin, it could make a certain amount of sense as a place to assign one aircaft.
Of course we’re a couple of years away from NH getting the aircraft and a whole lot can happen between now and then.
Using it on domestic routes would make sense only in Japan.
I’m not sure how I understand your comment that they don’t earn a revenue premium from them – if well placed, NRT-SFO, for example, and if they innovate with the hard product (not that they have much incentive to do so), they could differentiate the product enough for folks to desire to fly the A380 over other aircraft, especially as a comparison to one variety of their 77W.
True that much can happen before ANA gets their aircraft. I guess at the end of the day, I just feel like with only 3 aircraft, they either need to make a splash, or go the other extreme – in which case, as you state, a domestic route may be the most efficient use. I’m still not convinced (and I haven’t been to HNL for a few years) that HNL can even support regular A380 service, at least from my research.
Great exchange of information, thanks guys!
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