All Nippon Airways (ANA) is the latest airline to announce major additions to its China network, following further moves by the Chinese government to restore international travel.
The carrier plans to resume flights from Tokyo Haneda Airport to Beijing and both Shanghai airports—Pudong and Hongqiao—starting April 1. This will be the first time since March 2020 that ANA has flown these routes from Haneda.
The Beijing route will start with five roundtrip flights per week and lift to daily starting April 10. The Shanghai routes will start as daily. All will be on Boeing 787-8s.
ANA is currently serving Beijing and Shanghai Pudong with flights from Tokyo Narita Airport. These flights will continue even after Haneda services to these cities are added.
The airline told Aviation Daily it is now operating 10% of its pre-pandemic flights to China. The resumption of the three Haneda routes will push this above 20%.
All of ANA’s current services to mainland China are being operated from Narita. In addition to Beijing and Shanghai Pudong, the airline flies to Dalian, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Qingdao, and Shenzhen.
Data from CAPA and OAG shows that ANA is already operating 28.2% of its pre-pandemic capacity on routes between Narita and mainland China. However, this is offset by the absence of China flights from Haneda—a situation that will change in April.
ANA focused many of its international services at Narita during the pandemic to take advantage of connecting flows while Japan remained restricted. Now, however, it is resuming more point-to-point routes using Haneda.