Two months after Japanese airline All Nippon Airways (ANA) announced it will launch a second daily service to Sydney, we now know the schedule for the new flights.
All Nippon Airways already flies daily between Sydney and Tokyo’s Haneda Airport using Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners. The second daily flights, which will also use Boeing 787-9 aircraft, will commence on 29 March 2020. Complementing the airline’s current overnight services on this route, the new flights will both operate during daylight hours.
According to Routes Online, ANA’s new service NH890 will depart Sydney daily at 12pm, touching down in Tokyo at 8.30pm after nine-and-a-half hours in the air. In the other direction, NH889 will take-off from Haneda Airport at 8.45am and arrive in Sydney at 7.10pm.
Currently, ANA’s single daily flight from Haneda arrives in Sydney at 9.55am. The aircraft then sits on the ground at Sydney Airport until 9.30pm, when it heads back to Tokyo. The airline’s new Sydney-Haneda schedule will allow for much more efficient aircraft utilisation.
Tickets on the new ANA flights, NH889 & NH890, are not yet available for sale. We expect that this will occur in the coming weeks. Curiously, ANA originally said they expected to begin ticket sales in mid-December 2019.
Virgin Australia will codeshare on the All Nippon Airways flights from Sydney to Tokyo. The two airlines have announced that they will become partners at the end of March, when Virgin launches its own daily flights from Brisbane to Haneda. However, further details have not yet been announced and the codeshare flights are still not available for sale.
Meanwhile, Qantas revealed last month that it will use the new slot pair it was awarded at Haneda Airport to switch its Melbourne-Narita flight to Melbourne-Haneda, from 29 March 2020. Haneda Airport is generally preferred by business travellers due to its closer proximity to the Tokyo CBD.
As I recently discovered, All Nippon Airways provides excellent service even in Economy class. With the option of daytime flights now available to Tokyo in both directions, these new services will be a great way to get to Japan and back.
