ANA to fly Dreamliner to Beijing and Frankfurt
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All Nippon Airways (ANA) has announced that Beijing and Frankfurt will be the first international ports of call for its brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliners. The first Dreamliner is scheduled to be delivered to the airline in late September, with the first regular international operation to be on the route between Tokyo’s Haneda airport and Beijing from December. Then, from January 2012, ANA’s Dreamliners will embark on their first long-haul international route between Haneda and Frankfurt.
ANA, which is the launch customer of Boeing’s long-awaited new aircraft, will start its Dreamliner operations with a charter services between Tokyo and Hong Kong on 26 and 27 October, to showcase the new Dreamliner. It will then be put into regular service on the domestic route between Haneda and Okayama on 1 November 2011, with its second Dreamliner commencing operations on the Haneda-Hiroshima route on the same day. Further domestic services are planned to Itami, Yamaguchi-Ube and Matsuyama.
Then from December, the Dreamliner will start its international services, flying the Haneda-Beijing route once a week until the Frankfurt services start the following month. Flights to the German financial hub will initially operate three times a week (Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays) before increasing to daily from February 2012. This new route will be one of the joint venture operations between ANA and Lufthansa. The Frankfurt route will be an overnight service, with flights departing Tokyo at 0100 and arriving in Frankfurt at 0525. The return service will leave Germany at 1115, arriving back into Japan at 0645 the following day.
ANA has ordered 55 Dreamliners, making it not only the launch customer but also the largest single airline customer for the new wide-body aircraft. The announcement of a firm flight schedule will come as a relief not only ANA but all of Boeing’s 57 Dreamliner customers, who have been forced to endure multiple delays in the aircraft’s production. Despite this, the 787 remains the commercial aviation industry’s fastest-selling aircraft model, having racked up 827 firm orders.
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