Virgin Australia (VA, Brisbane International) has applied for one daily slot at Tokyo Haneda out of two recently allocated to Australian carriers, Reuters has reported. Qantas (QF, Sydney Kingsford Smith) has applied for both slots at the Tokyo gateway.

Virgin Australia did not disclose from which Australian hub it would like to serve Haneda and has not yet lodged an application with the International Air Services Commission (IASC). The airline does not currently serve Japan, the ch-aviation schedules module shows.

Virgin's international long-haul network currently comprises of services to Hong Kong International (from Melbourne Tullamarine and Sydney Kingsford Smith) and to Los Angeles International (from Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane International). The carrier is undergoing restructuring and plans to conclude its network review by the end of 2019.

For its part, Qantas said in an application to the IASC that it would like to launch a second daily service to Haneda from Sydney and transfer the existing daily Melbourne-Tokyo Narita route to Haneda.

According to the ch-aviation capacities module, Qantas is the dominant carrier between Australia and Japan. It has a 41.2% market share by capacity and already offers 14 weekly services to Narita, seven to Haneda (from Sydney), and four to Osaka Kansai, while its wholly-owned subsidiary Jetstar Airways (JQ, Melbourne Tullamarine) has a further 28.7% share. ANA - All Nippon Airways (NH, Tokyo Haneda) and JAL - Japan Airlines (JL, Tokyo Haneda) have a 15.9 and 14.3% share, respectively.

ANA and JAL have each been granted one daily slot from Haneda to launch services to Australia.

The new slots will become available on March 29, 2020.