Has anyone else observed that Japanese airlines seem to lean toward the largest passenger jets even for small domestic routes to secondary airports? When I was in Japan it seemed like everywhere I flew domestically was a 777 or 747. Not only that but it seems like they obtain them almost as soon as they’re available; for example ANA is scheduled to be a launch customer for the 787.
This seems odd for a country that is about the size of the US east coast, smaller jets could easily cover the entire domestic territory. Am I incorrect in my observation or do Japanese airlines have some special reason for this jumbo domestic fleet?
I am not sure what that means but it sounds odd. The U.S. is the 3rd most populous country in the world and it is also vast and affluent with most people having very far-flung domestic friends and family. It is ideal for plane travel because planes beat out cars and other forms of mass transportation handily on trips that would take 10 hours or more in a car.
The question, if it is accurate, is a good one. I have never flown on a 747 for transcontinental trips. 747’s cost over $200 million a piece and are meant to be very long range aircraft and they require very long-runways and expensive, special airport equipment. I wouldn’t think that they would be used in a country as small as Japan for domestic flights. The trend in U.S. airliners is to use the mid-sized planes like 737’s (all of Southwest Airlines planes for example) and become agile enough to use most of the hundreds of passenger airports available in the U.S. with smaller groups of passengers.
The only thing that I can think of is that Japan has a very large group of people that want to travel direct from one major airport to another. It still sounds strange because two smaller planes would be more flexible and probably cheaper.
Japanese have a unique fascination with technology and The Future. It’s not surprising to me that Japanese airlines are the first to refresh their fleets, nor that they prefer the most impressive jets available.
According to their website they don’t even fly Asahikawa - Sapporo.
ANA have a full range of aircraft from Dash 8s to B747s. Airbus A320s and Boeing B737s fly shorthaul routes. It is quite likely that you were on a domestic sector of an international flight when flying in the B747. Or it is possible that the load factors for that particular route make a B747 the most economic choice.
As far as getting new aircraft as soon as they are available, that is not unusual for competitive airlines. There are many airlines that are launch customers, Boeing and Airbus would be quickly out of business if they did not have sufficient launch customers for their aircraft.
Slip of the tongue, I meant to say Asahikawa-Tokyo/Haneda. Admittedly Haneda is a huge hub but it is almost exclusively domestic. If you recall, the crashed JAL 123 was a domestic flight, a 747 from Osaka to Haneda, almost all seats full. And I have observed jumbos between smaller regional hubs like Okayama-Hiroshima and elsewhere.
I admit I don’t make notes of the aircraft every time I fly domestically in Japan, but it seems like every single time I do, I find myself saying “they used a 777 for this podunk route?” But I’ve never seen one less than half full, so I guess they must know what they’re doing.
A Japanese friend of mine once told me that many of her countryfolk will fly internationally to domestic Japanese destinations - ie. they do it in two hops via Seoul. Apparently it’s cheaper for some reason. Is this true?
Many of Japan’s airports are capacity constrained. We aren’t there yet in most of the USA.
If 3000 people want to fly from A to B today, the flexible & consumer-convenient method is 20 737s at 150 seats each. But if the airport only has runway timeslots for 6 departures per day, the only way to haul the load is 7 450-seat 747s/777s. When every slot at an airport is consumed, the only way to grow traffic is larger planes.
Japan does not have a legal concept akin to eminent domain. They have been trying for over 30 years to build a new runway at Haneda & one farmer has stymied them by being unwilling to sell.
Also, Japanese economics is generally much more producer-oriented vs. the US consumer-oriented system. It may in fact be cheaper for the airline to do the 6 heavies per day, and the consumers put up with it because they have to; some conbination of government control & producer cartel prevents a new competitor from offering a different service.
Thanks LSLGuy. The producer-oriented service concept was on the tip of my tongue but I wasn’t aware of the capacity-constrained airports.
One thing I also noticed is that the seasonal travel fluctuations seem to be a lot no risk of empty seats even if you put a very large jet on any route out of Tokyo during O-Bon weekend, for example.
I had to fly on ANA from Tokyo Haneda to Sapporo. I asked the reservation agent what time the flights were.
They were leaving at 30 minute intervals at some parts of the day. It’s a very popular route as Sapporo is the one large city that is really, really, really hard to get to by train from Tokyo. I believe I was on a 747 going back and forth.
One nice touch in Japan is that the reservation clerks give me a bulkhead or exit row seat without asking. Such are the perks of being a 6’5" white guy in Japan.
When I flew from Narita to Sapporo, I found out that there were far fewer flights and I think they used a 737.