ANA CEO looks to boost fleet with Boeing 787, launch low-cost airline

By Aditi Shah

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA) wants to grow its short and medium-haul fleet by 2030, especially expanding the Boeing (NYSE:) 787 planes it has on order, CEO Shinichi Inoue said on the sidelines of an aviation conference in Istanbul on Monday.

ANA is still not operating the number of aircraft it did pre-COVID but expects to get to that level by 2025 and exceed that number by 2030, Inoue said, adding that by then it wants to have more than 100 Boeing 787s in its fleet.

“It is important for us to increase fuel efficient aircraft such as the 787 in the future,” Inoue said at the annual meeting of the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

Air travel is slowly recovering in Japan post pandemic with inbound passenger traffic coming back stronger while outbound leisure demand is “still weak”, he added.

While the fear of getting infected is still putting off some passengers from travelling overseas, a weaker yen versus the dollar is making it costlier for Japanese travellers and hurting outbound demand, Inoue said.

While limited flights between the U.S. and China are resulting in some additional inbound demand for ANA as passengers travel through Tokyo, inflationary trends in the U.S. are expected to further crimp outbound travel, he said.

ANA said last year it plans to launch a new international low-cost carrier in late 2023 or early 2024, focused on the Southeast Asian market as tourism revives post pandemic.

ANA expects to launch Air Japan by spring 2024, Inoue said.