ANA will begin serving Haneda-Milan, Stockholm and Istanbul after December 2024 in addition to an increase in flights for Paris and Munich to daily operations on July 1 and restart of Vienna flights on August 1. In this coming winter schedule, ANA will expand its Europe network to 49 flights a week to nine cities in eight countries.
ANA originally planned to fly to Milan, Stockholm and Istanbul before the pandemic. Shinichi Inoue, ANA CEO, said at a press conference, “Our international flight business will finally be back to the pre-pandemic level, I am overwhelmed with emotion.”
ANA will begin serving three flights a week with Boeing 787-9 (215 seats) for Milan on December 3. This will be the first schedule flight for Milan from Haneda, though ANA used to operate Kansai-Milan flights before.
ANA signed a partnership agreement with Italian railway ‘Trenitalia,’ which enables ANA to provide ANA flight passengers with ground connections to 25 cities in Italy and other major cities in Europe from Milano Malpensa Airport. Inoue said that it is well-balanced route with demands of business travel, outbound and inbound leisure travels, expecting to carry 60% from Japan and 40% from Europe.
Three Haneda-Stockholm flights a week will be served with Boeing 787-8 (184 seats) on January 31 2025. While Inoue expects that connection passengers will account for around 50%, he said that Stockholm will possibly be a new leisure travel destination in Northern Europe because ANA will be only an airline serving direct flights from Japan.
ANA will begin serving three flights a week for Istanbul with Boeing 787-8 (184 seats) on February 12 2025. Inoue said that ANA will appeal the flights to matured Japanese outbound travelers.
新規就航について説明する井上社長
Need to establish to supply jet fuel more stably
Inoue mentioned the outbound travel market that has still recovered slowly. “Numerically, the business has still been dull,” he said. “However, demand was up 1.3 times year on year in June this year, so the market is not shrunk. The important thing is how we can boost consumers’ minds for traveling overseas.”
Also, Inoue referred to the jet fuel shortage issue, which seem to be one of the hurdles for local airports to extend their international networks. Although he revealed that ANA does not have any influences from the issue, he said, “This is an urgent national challenge to maintain the domestic flight network and increase international flight productivity. We hope that the government will establish a stable supply system.”
