Thursday, December 18, 2014

Vanilla Air to suspend Seoul.

On December 17th, Vanilla Air [JW/VNL] announced their Summer 2015 schedule, effective from March 29th, 2015. While increasing frequencies to the popular domestic holiday destinations of Okinawa/Naha [OKA/ROAH] and Sapporo/New Chitose [CTS/RJCC], its daily round-trip connecting Tokyo/Narita [NRT/RJAA] and Seoul/Incheon [ICN/RKSI] will be suspended. Tickets for most flights went on sale at 1400 JST on December 18th.

Airbus A320-211 JA8391 LOHACO Jet (Vanilla Air's 'LOHACO Jet' enters service.) lines up for departure from New Chitose on an autumn afternoon. All three 166-seat former ANA A320s have now been replaced by brand new A320s (Vanilla Air unveils new interior with latest Airbus A320.). JA8391 was the last of the three to leave Japanese soil on November 29th, and was ferried to Tucson, U.S.A. for part out. (Photo: Ryosuke Yano)

Network Overview (from March 29, 2015):
Narita – Amami 1 daily. (no change)
Narita – Hong Kong 2 daily. (no change)
Narita – Kaohsiung 1 daily. (no change)
Narita – Naha from up to 2 daily to up to 3 daily. (INCREASE)
Narita – New Chitose from up to 4 daily to up to 8 daily. (INCREASE)
Narita – Seoul/Incheon 1 daily suspended. (SUSPENSION)
Narita – Taipei/Taoyuan 3 daily. (no change) 

The fledgling Narita-based LCC, a wholly owned subsidiary of ANA Holdings, launched service to Incheon on March 1st (Vanilla Air adds Seoul to its network.) and quickly increased it to double-daily two weeks later. However, it was reduced to a daily service from October 26th (Vanilla Air announces Hong Kong and Kaohsiung.) and that too has now been announced to be cut. Branding itself as a leisure LCC, Vanilla Air depends heavily on tourism-oriented travelers, and performance of their sole route to South Korea has been susceptible to the fragile political relationship between the two neighboring nations.

Source: Vanilla Air, December 17th. (in Japanese)

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