Polemics around slots allocation to All Nippon Airways in Tokyo

TOKYO- If the step is taken by Japan Airlines, this would go into the business history of Japan as a unique event. Following the attribution of more slots to its rival All Nippon Airways (ANA) than to Japan Airlines, the airline’s president Yoshiharu Yueki, is threatening to take legal action against the government by suing them in court? In an interview to news agency Reuters last Thursday, JAL's president raised the prospect of an unprecedented battle that could batter the nation's airline industry.

Commenting on this step, Reuters explains that such a move of asking a court to force the government to review its recent allocation would be a rare step for a Japanese company, especially one that once enjoyed cozy ties to politicians and regulators but which has fallen out of favor of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's one-year-old administration. "It's one of the steps we might take in the future," said Yoshiharu Ueki said, when asked if legal action was one possibility.

When designating new slots allocations at Haneda Airport, Tokyo city airport which reopened to international traffic in 2010, following a runway extension. Today 30,000 annual flights to international destinations have been handover at Haneda with another round of 30,000 additional annual slots recently distributed. While until today, JAL and ANA had both 13 daily international flights, from now All Nippon Airways will be able to offer 24 daily international flights while JAL will only be able to mount up its frequencies to 18 daily flights.

Ueki said his company had asked the government to give a satisfactory explanation for the landing-rights handout, which saw ANA receive more than twice as many of the prized international slots at Haneda airport than JAL. The government provided so far an answer to JAL queries but JAL has rather continued to express its dissatisfaction. Ueki qualified the government's decision as opaque and irrational, and left key points unexplained.

"There are times when you will take actions because you are trying to achieve a particular result, and sometimes you will take actions even knowing that you might not be able to get a particular result," Ueki said. "Sometimes things have to be said, sometimes things have to be done," he told Reuters at JAL's Tokyo headquarters.

Sourced: TravelDailyNews