British Airways is changing up its Tokyo flying routine, and for those that want to get into town quickly, it’s good news. For those hoping to make the journey on the Airbus A350 however, it’s not. As of March 2020, British Airways will move to double daily flights into Tokyo Haneda, saying sayonara to Narita for good. Here’s all the details…
Tokyo Haneda International is Tokyo’s closer international gateway, less than a half hours drive from central Tokyo. It’s often referred to as the city airport. From March 28th, 2020, British Airways will move to double daily Tokyo Haneda International flights and ditch their once daily Tokyo Narita slot.
Though many airlines do operate out of both Tokyo’s airports, it makes good sense operationally to streamline efforts, particularly to the airport preferred by most customers. The second flight will initially be operated by a Boeing 787 Dreamliner to accompany the current Boeing 777 offering on the Haneda route.
It’s a good thing this is text and not a video blog. British Airways has also updated their flying schedule to note that the Airbus A350 will not indeed be coming online into Tokyo when the schedule shifts over, as previously planned. The British Airways A350-1000 was promised to teams throughout BA as a sales tool to entice lucrative bookings for the Olympics, but that no longer appears tenable.
A rumour is however circulating that after some “service enhancements”, an A350 may come online for the second half the year…
The A350 offers a relatively similar passenger experience in both economy and premium economy with the latest and greatest seats, similar to those found on the 787 Dreamliner, but it was the Club Suites up front which set the A350 apart and would’ve made it an attractive option for Tokyo flights.
Let’s hope things change on that front, or that a retrofitted Boeing 777 featuring the new suites will be included at a later juncture. This is mostly good news for BA passengers with Tokyo bookings, since they’ll now have easier access in and out of the city, and those with lounge access will enjoy better facilities.
I was booked on the Narita flights at the end of August. They’ve just cancelled them and rebooked me onto the Haneda flight.
Lo and behold MMB is showing it as operated by an A350 again today (which is what it showed when I first booked it a month ago). I won’t bother switching my seat assignment back as my current seat No. is good for a 787.
I’m hearing they may have service mods in place to get it on route for August, so you may indeed get a350! I hope you do!
Fingers crossed! I got to try the VS A350 last year so it would be nice to compare it – especially on a flight that’s much more substantial than LHR-JFK.
I think I may have benefited from the A350 being moved back off this route in the first part of the summer as well – I have a flight coming up on JAL in April (the 2am flight from HND-LHR) which has been operated by a 787 as far as I can tell since last April (without F). A few weeks ago they switched it to a 777 and released an Avios seat in F so I decided to upgrade myself 🙂
I don’t know for sure if it’s connected to the A350 issues, but perhaps if BA were going to switch from a 787 to an A350 to increase capacity to Tokyo and then had to revert to the 787, JAL switched their 787 for a 777 instead.
Oh, and congratulations on the new arrival!
tanks for sharing
Like John my fight to NRT In August was re-routed. Prior to this, it started as a 787 when I booked, changed to an A350 late last year, moved to a 777 at the start of this year and now looks to be back to an A350… it’s like aircraft bingo on this route!
Appalling lack of consideration for its passengers by BA. Changing a flight in this way at such short notice is unacceptable especially as it is a contract between the passenger and the airline. I have had to change all my travel plans at great extra cost. Many passengers want to go to Narita, and Haneda is 40 minutes from central Tokyo so it is not as near as many people think.
Having flown to Haneda and Narita around 370 times, I know which I prefer – Narita.
370 times and you couldn’t work out that Narita is more than double the time to Tokyo than Haneda? It’s 25 to 30 minutes to Tokyo Station, less than 20 if you count Hamamatsuchō as Tokyo, like Heathrow considers Paddington London.
It’s also only 630¥ versus nearly 3000¥ on NeX.
What are the “service enhancements”…….?