U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx on July 20, proposed to select four airlines to provide new daytime service to Tokyo’s downtown Haneda airport as early as this fall.
“The availability of daytime access to Tokyo’s centrally located Haneda Airport will create more choice and convenience for both business and leisure travelers, and advances the Department’s work to increase competition and bring enhanced service options to the marketplace,” said Secretary Foxx.
Four airlines applied to operate daytime scheduled passenger service to Haneda. The airlines are seeking five flights per day to Tokyo, made available by a new agreement between government of the United States and Japan. In choosing the proposed finalists, the DOT sought to maximize public benefits based on the carriers that offered and could maintain the best ongoing service between the U.S. and Tokyo.
The carriers selected are American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Hawaiian Airlines, and United Airlines. The proposed U.S. cities are Los Angeles, Honolulu, San Francisco, and Minneapolis.
Three of the cities – Los Angeles, Honolulu, and San Francisco – already have service to Haneda, but those services have been required to operate at night only. Under the new agreement, carriers may arrive and depart Haneda during more favorable daytime hours. The new route from Minneapolis also is included in that group.
Only one carrier, Hawaiian, applied for the single nighttime opportunity made available under the agreement. On May 13, 2016, Secretary Foxx announced the award to Hawaiian for service between Kona and Haneda, and between Honolulu and Haneda.
On Feb. 18, the U.S. and Japan completed a successful negotiation to amend our bilateral Open Skies agreement. The amendment provides that, effective October 30th of this year, the four existing U.S. nighttime slot pairs at Haneda will be transferred to daytime hours. In addition, one new daytime flight opportunity and one new nighttime flight opportunity will become available for U.S. carrier scheduled passenger services. In March, DOT launched a proceeding to award the new opportunities.
Objections to the proposed allocations are due by August 1, 2016. Following that, interested parties may file answers to those objections by Aug. 8. The DOT will consider all of this material before reaching a final decision. Interested parties may track the progress of the case and view the publicly available documents at regulations.gov, Docket DOT-OST-2016-0048.
