All Nippon Airways (ANA) has announced further cancellations of four international routes from March 31 to May 31 due to the continued grounding of Boeing 787 aircraft.
The affected routes are Tokyo Narita-Seattle, Tokyo Narita-San Jose, Osaka Kansai-Seoul Incheon and Nagoya Chubu-Seoul Incheon.
ANA currently has the largest number of Dreamliners in its fleet with 17 of the aircraft.
“ANA has revised all domestic flight schedules on the assumption that operations of the Boeing 787 will not recommence before May 31, 2013,” said the company in a statement. “Due to the above situation, cancellations and schedule changes have been implemented on certain routes.
“ANA will continue to cooperate with all parties and make all efforts to ensure and confirm the safety of this aircraft, so that B787 flights may recommence as soon as possible.”
The airline will continue to operate the Tokyo Haneda-Frankfurt route because of high demand, but a B777-300ER will be deployed instead of the Dreamliner. This move will actually increase the daily capacity from 158 to 247 passengers.
According to an ANA spokesman, the latest adjustment will increase the total number of flights cancelled due to the Dreamliner grounding to 3,601, with more than 157,800 passengers affected.
All 50 Dreamliners currently in commercial operation have been grounded since January 17 due to concerns about the safety of the aircraft’s lithium batteries which caused one onboard fire after a B787 had landed in Boston and forced another aircraft to make an emergency landing in Japan.
Reports last week suggested that Boeing might be closing in on a solution to the problem with the batteries but has yet to make any official announcement on when the Dreamliner may be able to resume commercial flights.
United has also discounted using most of its six Dreamliners until early June. Although the airline hopes it will be able to launch its Denver-Tokyo service using a B787 on May 12 – this new route has already been cancelled from its original start date of March 31.
"We are taking the B787 out of our schedule through June 5, except for Denver-Narita, which will tentatively launch on May 12," said United in a statement.
The grounding of the Dreamliner has also led to Japan Airlines postponing the launch of its new Tokyo-Helsinki service. It had been scheduled to start on February 25 and a new launch date has yet to be announced.