Air Transport

Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA) has unveiled capacity cuts generated from the upcoming suspension of services on two routes and a switch to smaller aircraft or reduction in frequency on several others.

The Star Alliance carrier says in a statement that on 26 October it will be suspending its Nagoya-Taipei daily service and on 13 January will suspend its daily Osaka Kansai-Guam service.

ANA uses Boeing 767-300ERs on the Guam route and Boeing 737-700s on the Taipei route and it makes no mention of when the services may resume.

The airline also says on 1 November it is reducing the frequency of services on the Sapporo-Sendai, Memanbetsu-Osaka Kansai, Sapporo-Osaka Kansai, Tokyo Haneda-Osaka Kansai, Tokyo Haneda-Oshima and Osaka Kansai-Okinawa domestic routes.

On 1 February it is reducing the frequency of services on the Kagoshima-Okinawa and Nagoya-Matsuyama domestic routes, it adds.

Other capacity cuts will be achieved by moving to smaller aircraft for services linking Nagoya with Hangzhou in China as well as for services linking Tokyo Haneda with Shanghai Hongqiao in China. In addition, smaller aircraft will be used on some Tokyo Narita-Hangzhou and Tokyo Narita-Shanghai Pudong flights, it says.

“The changes are a consequence of the increasing price of Dubai crude oil,” says ANA, adding that its earlier plans were based on the assumption crude oil would be $95 a barrel but in fact it is now around $130 a barrel.

“ANA is expecting its fuel bill this year to increase by ¥40 billion ($369 million) year-on-year to more than ¥300 billion,” it adds.

Source: flightglobal.com's sister premium news site Air Transport Intelligence news