ANA, Japan’s largest airline, was awarded three daylight hour slots at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and has decided to use two of those slots for its direct flights from New York JFK and Chicago to increase the convenience for its passengers.
Haneda Airport is located less than 30 minutes south of central Tokyo, considerably closer to the city center than Narita Airport, Tokyo’s other international airport. The new Haneda Airport routes will begin in the 2016 winter timetable. With services already operating from Los Angeles, Honolulu and Vancouver to Haneda Airport, this will increase the total number of flights to the central airport from North American cities to five.
Additionally, ANA announced today that starting in February 2017 it will begin direct flights from Tokyo to Mexico City, which will become ANA’s 42nd direct international destination. The Boeing 787-8 will fly direct daily flights from Narita International Airport to Mexico City International Airport.
ANA will become the only airline operating daily direct flights between Mexico and Japan.
Having entered into free trade agreements with 45 countries around the globe including Japan and the US, Mexico is becoming increasingly attractive as a manufacturing and export center, and over the five years since 2010, foreign direct investment from Japan has increased by approximately 2.7 times and the number of Japanese-owned corporations with operations in Mexico has approximately doubled. As such, economic ties between Japan and Mexico are growing stronger every year, particularly in the automobile industry. As the TPP comes into effect, the relationship between Mexico and Japan is expected to become increasingly important.
ANA has been preparing for the launch of direct flights to Mexico since the opening of the Mexico City Sales Office in July 2015. In June 2015, ANA began offering flights between Narita and Houston, allowing passengers to easily travel from seven cities in Mexico by transferring onto code-share flights.