It seems the joint venture that featured ANA and Air Asia coming together has floundered quite badly, with ANA Holdings to buy out Air Asia’s stake in Air Asia Japan.
This will result in Air Asia Japan operating until the end of October 2013 under the current brand.
The partnership between Air Asia and ANA lasted for about a year or so.
Operating in Japan has been a challenge for Air Asia who are not used to the heavier regulatory functions Japan has compared to other some other countries. In addition, there has been a culture clash in how to operate the airline too – which hasn’t helped it along its way, paving the way to a 3.5 Billion Yen loss.
Blame has been leveled in how Japanese buy tickets (from travel agents to convenience stores – and just selling online instead), to the uptake of seats, to the availability of the Air Asia website in Japanese), to choosing Tokyo Narita as a base.
Load factors have been unhealthy, with an average of 63% filled per flight. As an LCC needing to fill many more seats than that, this isn’t what you call good factors.
Air Asia Japan operates seven routes with four aircraft – the fate of which is undecided (as is the remainder of the airline after October 2013). It’s possible that ANA could merge the remaining Air Asia aircraft into its own Peach Aviation product
However, for now – there will be one less low cost carrier in Japan come October.
Great post! I have my first Air Asia flight tomorrow afternoon (OKA – NRT), I’m curious to try their product. Peach was an interesting ordeal.
narita is the biggest mistake – whatever you save from the airfare is lost to transport costs to narita plus time lost (unless it’s mostly connection oriented)
ANA should just focus on Peach instead of dealing with 2 different LCCs. Also, add NGO as a second hub for Peach.