Australia and Japan have an open skies agreement that allows for unlimited capacity between the countries. This has enabled a rapid growth in capacity between the countries in recent years. We’ve previously highlighted this, particularly the phenomenal growth in outbound travel from Australia to Japan.
Most of this capacity has been pushed through Tokyo’s Narita airport as Haneda is constrained by a very limited number of slots being available for international flights and carriers. Unusually, these are allocated to countries on a bilateral reciprocal basis, allowing the countries to allocate them to their airlines as they see fit.
Australia was awarded one slot pair in 2014 that was subsequently allocated to Qantas by the IASC. In 2019, Australia was awarded another two slot pairs that were allocated to Qantas and Virgin. Virgin has since withdrawn from the market and returned their allocation that was then reallocated to Qantas in September 2024.
Qantas were meant to begin utilising their 3rd daily frequency from the end of March, however the IASC has since granted them an extension until the end of November. Concerningly, the IASC kinda hid this on their website. It isn’t listed on their "Latest Updates" and not part of the usual email distribution, but that’s another matter.
