Qantas joins Air New Zealand in Japanese growth, hoping to regain traffic from Cathay and SIA

While many airlines are reducing flights to Japan, Qantas is joining Air New Zealand in growing services. The thinking behind the move is partially that outbound traffic to Japan will grow with the yen's depreciation, but also that as other carriers cut capacity in Japan, outbound Japanese traffic has fewer options. Australia and New Zealand were once big favourites of Japanese travellers; as recently as 2005 Japan was Australia's third largest source of travellers. Now the China market has overshadowed growth developments.

Qantas from Aug-2015 will launch a daily service to Tokyo Haneda from an Australian city to be confirmed by the end of 2014. Although Haneda is more convenient than Narita, Qantas will need to contend with Haneda's limited slots - potentially making Sydney-Haneda a difficult option. By offering more options, Qantas will hope to regain traffic from Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines, which carry about 19% of Australia-Japan passengers. But those sixth freedom carriers will likely retain an advantage with their city pair and time combinations.