US carriers battle for Tokyo Haneda slots

PANGKALAN BUN  Indonesian search officials sent divers down to the bed of the Java Sea during a break in bad weather Tuesday in hopes of recovering more bodies from the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501.
Recovery teams, hampered by rough seas, have found fewer than 40 bodies since the plane crashed, 28 December, carrying 162 people from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.
“Some divers have started to dive to the seabed,” search and rescue agency chief Bambang Soelistyo told reporters on the tenth day of the major search involving several countries.
The recovery teams have yet to find the “black box” flight data recorders, crucial to determining the cause of the crash, although they have located five major parts of the plane on the seabed including a “suspected tail” — where flight recorders are usually housed.
inside no 7The operation has prioritised finding the bodies of the victims, all but seven of whom were Indonesian. Some bodies were found still strapped into their seats.
The number recovered still stood at 37 on Tuesday, another search official, S.B. Supriyadi, told AFP from Pangkalan Bun, a town on Borneo island with the nearest airstrip to the wreckage.
Recovery teams have recently expanded the area of sea being combed for bodies and wreckage, believing bodies may have drifted in strong currents.
Indonesia’s meteorological agency BMKG has said weather was the “triggering factor” of the crash, with ice likely damaging the plane’s engines.
The initial report by BMKG into the likely cause of the crash referred to infra-red satellite pictures that showed the plane was passing through clouds with top temperatures of minus 80 to minus 85 degrees Celsius.
But it remained unclear why other planes on similar routes were unaffected by the weather, and other analysts said there was not enough information to explain the disaster until the flight recorders were recovered.American Airlines has applied for permission to operate a new route to Tokyo Haneda Airport, at the expense of one of Delta Air Lines’ existing flights.

As per the existing bilateral agreement between the US and Japan, US-based airlines can only operate four daily flights at Haneda. At present, these slots are being used by Delta Air Lines (from Los Angeles and Seattle), Hawaiian Airlines (from Honolulu) and United Airlines (from San Francisco).

American is planning to fly a Boeing 777 daily between LA and Haneda
American is planning to fly a Boeing 777 daily between LAX and Haneda
But now both American and Hawaiian say they are seeking a “reallocation” of these slots by the US Department of Transportation (DOT).

American is planning to add a new LA-Haneda service and wants the DOT to take consider reassigning Delta’s existing Seattle service. The airline argues that the “Los Angeles-Tokyo market is almost five times larger than Seattle-Tokyo”.

“With only four authorised daily flights for US airlines between Haneda and the United States, it is imperative that American be allowed to compete,” said American’s president, Scott Kirby.

“We are the only US global network carrier without the authority to operate our own aircraft at Haneda. American’s proposed Los Angeles-Haneda service will increase competition in the Haneda market and make the most of underutilised operating rights by giving millions of consumers and shippers a new, viable travel option to Haneda that they don’t have today.”

If approved, the LA-Haneda route would be operated daily, all-year-round, using a Boeing 777-200 aircraft.

But American faces competition for the slot, with Hawaiian also filing for permission to add a new daily service from Kona to Haneda. It argues that the existing Honolulu-Haneda route is “by far the most, if not only, successful route” of the four Haneda slot pairs granted to US carriers in 2010.

American currently operates flights to Tokyo Narita Airport from Dallas, Chicago and Los Angeles, and partners with JAL on its direct service between Haneda and San Francisco. The Kona-Haneda service meanwhile, would become Hawaiian’s fifth Japanese route.

sourced:traveldailymedia.com