After unsuccessful negotiations with the Department of Transportation (DOT), Delta Air Lines has canceled its plans to materialize the Portland (PDX) – Tokyo/Haneda (HND) route. Previously, the airline had asked the DOT to change the slot to another U.S. airport for a period of 2 to 3 years while demand between Tokyo and PDX recover.
Faced with the Department’s rejection and not being able to make it commercially feasible to resume the route, Delta has decided to return the DOT, this will allow other airlines to apply for the slot for new services. With this schedule change, the carrier leaves Portland International Airport (PDX) without direct connections to Asia.
In 2019, U.S. airlines were granted 12 pairs of slots to operate at Haneda Airport, Delta was the biggest beneficiary where it obtained five pairs to fly to Seattle, Detroit, Atlanta, Honolulu and Portland. These services were to have started in March 2020, due to the pandemic crisis, the DOT allowed the company a downtime exemption while demand in the transpacific market recovered.
The history of Delta’s Portland-Asia flights begins in the 1990s when it established a transpacific hub at PDX, which was later closed due to low profitability and the financial crisis in Asia at the time. Then in June 2004, Northwest Airlines began nonstop service between Portland and Tokyo/Narita, which continued after the merger with Delta and ended in March 2020.
Following the closure of the Narita hub, the airline focused its transpacific hub operations on Seoul-Incheon, hub of the airline’s Joint Venture partner Korean Air. With this, Delta would focus on O&D demand on its U.S.-Japan routes.
United seeks new flight at Haneda
Following the announcement of Delta’s cessation of operations between Portland and Tokyo, United has applied to the Department for Delta’s slot to begin daily service between Houston-Intercontinental and Haneda, in addition it also requested five weekly frequencies for a Guam-Haneda route, coming from Hawaiian Airlines’ Kona/Honolulu routes.
In 2019, United had requested six slots to Haneda, but was only granted four for routes to Newark, Los Angeles, Washington-Dulles and Chicago O’Hare, ruling out Houston and Guam. Now with the slots free, the airline is ready to materialize the services it has requested.
Tokyo is one of United Airlines’ top international markets across its network. For this winter season, the airline will have a supply of about 50,000 seats per week and 14 daily flights between the Japanese capital with the United States and the Mariana Islands.
See also: Delta adds new European routes for 2024 summer season
