Virgin Australia (VA, Brisbane International) has moved to secure its prized Tokyo Haneda slots and will commence daily B737-8 roundtrip services there from Cairns on June 28, 2023. The airline faced losing the fiercely fought-for slots, awarded in early 2020, if it did not commit to starting flights in 2023.

Subject to regulatory approval, the two-cabin class B737-8 will take seven-and-a-half hours to complete the sector, with a lunchtime departure from Cairns arriving in Tokyo early in the evening. The return leg to Australia will depart mid-evening and arrive at around 0600L (2000Z) the following day. Virgin Australia noted that the Cairns arrival and departure times will allow for easy connections to and from Sydney Kingsford Smith, Melbourne Tullamarine, and Brisbane International.

"It was a long time in the making for Virgin Australia," said CEO Jayne Hrdlicka in Cairns on Wednesday morning. "We've been looking at this for many months. Haneda for us is a logical place. It is the most important airport in Tokyo and attaches to the biggest catchment in Tokyo. We're really excited to connect Haneda to Cairns and the rest of Australia."

The service is been underwritten by the Queensland government's AUD200 million Australian dollar (USD137 million) Attracting Aviation Investment Fund. Neither Virgin Australia nor the government has disclosed the amount the airline is receiving to operate the flights, but the same fund has been used recently to attract other airlines to Queensland, such as United Airlines' freshly launched Brisbane-San Francisco flights. Hrdlicka confirmed that the Haneda flights would not have been possible without government support.

In a hotly contested battle for flying rights into Haneda ahead of the planned 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Virgin Australia won one of four slot pairs and planned to operate A330-200 services there from Brisbane from March 2020. It axed its Hong Kong International flights to redeploy the aircraft to Japan, but the pandemic waylaid those plans, Virgin Australia went into voluntary administration, and Australia's International Air Services Commission (IASC) began deferring the deadline to start using the slot allocation.

However, with Australia's aviation market now firmly in recovery mode and Virgin Australia once again profitable, the IASC has indicated it is no longer willing to let Virgin Australia hang onto the slots without using them. But between the initial allocation and now, the carrier had offloaded all of its widebody aircraft and become a B737 operator only, adding a significant layer of complexity to starting flights on the country pair.

The arrival of Virgin Australia's first MAX aircraft in early 2023 provides the carrier with a plane with the range to make it all the way to Japan, albeit from the small tourist city of Cairns rather than Brisbane. The daily services will add around 60,000 seats per year on the Cairns-Tokyo route with Jetstar Airways already operating five roundtrip B787-8 flights a week to Tokyo Narita.

Meanwhile, Virgin Australia has also announced it will upgrade its partnership with ANA - All Nippon Airways over 2023 with expanded codeshare services and reciprocal loyalty benefits to be rolled out. Virgin has focused on bilateral strategic partnerships since exiting voluntary administration, including a highly touted alliance with Qatar Airways, which has thus far failed to deliver on some of its promised benefits.