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Well, beyond the obvious – Haneda is 15 minutes from central Tokyo by light rail or taxi vs. the hour that it takes to get there from Narita – the reopening of Haneda Airport to significant service to and from the United States paves the way for new – and likely – lower priced – competition. And that new competition will impact not only on the lucrative U.S.-Tokyo routes that cater mostly to high fare-paying business travelers but also routes between the U.S.
United and American, which have big global alliance partners in All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines, respectively, will continue for now to serve both Tokyo airports. They’ll exchange travelers headed to or from other Asian nations with their Japanese alliance partners at Narita. And they’ll exchange those people flying to or from other Japanese cities at Haneda, even as most of their Haneda passengers will simply be beginning or ending their flights there.
But as Asia’s markets matured and liberalized over the last quarter century, and as airlines formed and then gradually learned how to fully exploit their global alliance partnerships’ demand for seats over the Pacific, in both directions, exploded.
United still has ANA, a fellow Star Alliance member, and American continues to partner with JAL. So both have good reason to treat Tokyo as both an O&D and a connecting market. But both carriers now offer more service, either on their own planes or on the planes of non-Japanese members of their alliances to literally dozens of other Asian cities.