JAL - Japan Airlines (JL, Tokyo Haneda) and Hawaiian Airlines (HA, Honolulu) have announced they have filed an application with the US Department of Transportation (DOT) and Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) seeking antitrust immunity for their proposed Commercial Cooperation Agreement and Joint Venture Agreement covering flights between and within Hawaii and Japan and beyond Japan to other Asian points.

If approved, this will be Hawaiian’s first JV, and the first JV in the United States that does not involve one of the three largest US carriers namely American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta Air Lines.

The two parties said in a statement that the antitrust immunized joint venture (ATI-JV) will build upon the codeshare partnership that they initiated in March, allowing them to expand their networks, offer seamless online service to their customers on routes covered by the JV, provide more flight choices to their passengers, optimize their joint schedules, reduce connecting times, harmonize and enhance their services and products, co-locate facilities to improve passenger convenience, reduce fares through the elimination of double marginalization, grow capacity, and give their frequent flyer members the opportunity to earn and redeem frequent flyer miles on a much larger network.

"Hawaiian and JAL project that the combination of the Hawaiian and JAL network, retiming of certain Hawaii-Japan nonstop flights to increase connectivity, and the introduction of new services will stimulate between 162,000 and 350,000 passengers per year," they said. "These improved services amount to between USD56.3 million and USD124.7 million worth of consumer benefits. Because the preponderance of this traffic is foreign-originating, the stimulation will increase the number of visitors to the United States."

If approved, the ATI-JV would facilitate Hawaiian Airlines’ enhanced access to 34 destinations throughout Japan, including Nagoya Chubu and Okinawa Naha, as well as 11 points in Asia beyond Japan. Japan Airlines, in turn, will have improved access to Hawaiian’s Neighbor Island network as well as its non-stop flights to Honolulu from Tokyo Haneda and Sapporo Chitose.

Hawaiian and JAL hope to win government approval later this year, allowing them to launch the JV in the second quarter of 2019.