Hawaiian Airlines/Alaska Air Launching Seattle-Tokyo Narita Flights
Intro
For countless years, Alaska Air has only ever operated short-haul flights within the continental US and Central America. With the recent merger with Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska/Hawaiian has decided to launch a non-stop service from Seattle to Tokyo Narita. It's a bit more complex, so let's see how this is going to work out...
The Details
Beginning May 12th, 2025, Hawaiian Airlines will fly year-round daily direct flights from Seattle to Tokyo Narita. Ordinarily, we would have expected the first long-haul flight out of Seattle (with this merger) to feature their latest 787-9, but Hawaiian has chosen to utilize an A330-200 for the route featuring 18 business class seats in a 2-2-2 configuration and 260 economy seats in a 2-4-2 configuration. The schedule is as follows:
HA823: Seattle-Tokyo departing 1:30 PM arriving 4:00 PM (+1 day)
HA824: Tokyo-Seattle departing 6:25 PM arriving 11:30 AM
This route will also complement the twice-daily service that Hawaiian Airlines flies from Honolulu to Haneda (Narita will be canceled).
How Does This Fit?
Alaska has recently announced that it plans to introduce long-haul routes out of Seattle to certain destinations in Europe and Asia. Seeing as Tokyo is relatively close, and the route will most likely be codeshared with JAL, this is a very low-risk route to the first launch.
In addition, Alaska controls the Seattle market in terms of captive flyers. They are now able to offer their customers long-haul service to Tokyo from all sorts of destinations with a stop instead of giving passengers options between Delta/JAL/ANA/UA, etc.
The only aspect of this merger that I wonder about is how Alaska plans to utilize these long-haul jets. Presumably, the word is that planes based out of Seattle for Alaska will not be able to fly routes that don't contain Seattle and vice versa with Honolulu. Who knows at this rate?
My opinion is that in the next few years, Hawaiian Airlines will disappear as it will all be merged into the Alaska name.
Final Thoughts
Hawaiian Airlines will operate its very first flight of the decade, which doesn't include a Hawaiian city. As of May 2025, Hawaiian will be flying year-round daily service from Seattle to Nartia utilizing an A330-200. Considering the connecting options on both sides, Alaska in the US and JAL in Japan, this route makes perfect sense.
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