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ANA to start
Osaka-Honolulu
service this month
It will offer daily flights
By Russ Lynch
beginning March 26
Star-Bulletin
As it gears up to start its first service to Honolulu from Osaka's Kansai International Airport later this month, All Nippon Airways Co. is also changing the way it does business internationally and in Japan.
ANA said it will shrink its loss-making international flight capacity and boost domestic capacity to focus on its more profitable Japan business.
But Tom Fredo, an ANA spokesman in New York, said that decision mainly applies to ANA flights between Japan and other Asian destinations and the details have yet to be finalized.
Meanwhile, Fredo confirmed that ANA, which flies to Honolulu daily from Nagoya and four times a week from Tokyo, will launch daily Osaka-Honolulu service on March 26.
It will use a Boeing 747 with a section of business class as well as economy, like the one in its Tokyo-Honolulu service, he said.
The Nagoya-Honolulu service uses an all-economy-seating 747.
Fredo said ANA will probably decide next month, in a regular review of its business operations that takes place in the middle of each three-year business plan, how to handle international flights in the future. That business could be handed over to an existing low-cost operation, such as ANA subsidiary Air Nippon Inc., or to a new subsidiary yet to be created, he said.
But Fredo said no decision has been made about how the Hawaii service will be handled in the long run.
ANA has traditionally concentrated on profitable domestic services to support loss-making international operations. ANA's international operations have remained in the red since the airline began flying overseas in 1987, said Naoto Takada, an ANA spokesman in Tokyo.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
