00:00:01 John Daub: A brand new budget airline has been announced, launched in fact already doing flights from Japan to another country. In this episode I'm going to be talking about the LCC — low cost carrier — budget airlines coming from wherever in the world to Narita, which is the main budget airline airport of Tokyo. Some of the prices, some of the things about those flights, including the food, all that information as what we know of as of February 2024. In this episode, Air Japan, which is kind of a cool name.

00:00:33 John Daub: Why they don't have an airline called Air Japan before now, I don't know why, but it is — I guess a branch or subsidiary of ANA, which we say ANA here in Japan. ANA is maybe the number one airline national. It's one of the national carriers. One of two — Japan Airlines or JAL is what we call in Japan is the second one. And the two of them are — there's no one or two, they're both pretty much the same. High quality. Anyone who's ever flown a US carrier versus a Japanese carrier, the Japanese carrier is usually 99% of the time probably better with food, service, comfort, space, all of that.

00:01:12 John Daub: And the prices are still quite high. I've been taking a look at some of the feedback from all of you that the airline flights prices coming into Japan is still quite high. In particular from Europe. They're coming down a little bit in the US. I just flew in December to the United States and it was pricey. It was almost like — what was it? Almost a million yen for three people, including little Leo, who even got a discount. Flying premium economy one way and then flying economy back. It was quite high. But I think these budget carriers in particular AirJapan and right now ZipAir, which is JAL's budget airline, which has more routes, is going to drive the prices down. So I'm kind of excited about this.

00:01:45 John Daub: First, let's introduce the routes for ZipAir and for AirJapan. Now, AirJapan is that airline I just showed you a little bit before. It's an ANA's released budget airline only from Narita. Keep that in mind. It's a different airport than Haneda. Haneda's a little bit closer to city. Both of them are really well connected to the city. The routes very simple. Right now it just launched on February 9. The first flight to Bangkok started from Narita. AirJapan again — like if you Google this, you won't even get AirJapan as one of the options. I think we'll take a look at the price list which they released on their website. But they also have flights coming to Singapore in April, which is just a month and a half away, and then Seoul, Korea, which I believe will be starting soon.

00:02:49 John Daub: And I think — well, we'll talk about it. The strategy that they have with this, ZipAir's routes are even more comprehensive. You can see ZipAir has from Narita the same flights to Southeast Asia, Bangkok, Singapore, and to Korea. But it also has flights going to the west coast of the US — Honolulu, which is HNL right there, LAX, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Jose is the SJC. So those budget airlines are coming in there. So if you could get a cheap flight to any of those airports, you could connect up to ZipAir and save some money.

00:03:25 John Daub: And you look at the budget airlines, you're gonna think like — Vancouver too? I was looking like, how comfortable is this? Some people have already posted videos on this. You know, you can take a look at — let's see here. Do I have a ZipAir? This is the launch of AirJapan. This is like on their website. So you can see that they have put in a lot of work into the design. I love the logo, the A and the J, kind of making a circle sort of the colors of it.

00:03:56 John Daub: It doesn't look like a budget airline, but if you look at the video on their website, they basically taken like old ANA planes and just repainted it and made it new again. And those are usually pretty well maintained and kept here in Japan. So I have no doubt it's going to be maybe more comfortable than ZipAir. We're going to see as the reviews start coming in from other people. But AirJapan again is the newest budget carrier. You can see here that they also have food on board.

00:04:28 John Daub: And that's one of the things — when you come into Japan, even if it's a budget airline, the food is something that is definitely going to be leaving a mark on you as your first meal on a Japanese carrier. Sometimes your first meal in Japan it feels like they made these bentos. They're called Deco Bens or decorative bentos. So you don't have like lunch boxes which is very Japanese, but of course they made it really cute. And if you watch this video on their website, you can see they've added in extra flavor.

00:05:01 John Daub: That white rice looks like just plain white rice, but inside of it they actually have the taste of dashi, for example. So they've added the flavors of Japan in their bentos and of course the designs of it. Ultra cute. I don't know how you could even eat that — you just would probably. Everyone wants to take a picture of it. It's really cute. When you have a budget airline, you can count on the food being really good too. And that's something — and ZipAir has gotten pretty good reviews on the food as well.

00:05:34 John Daub: For being a budget airline. Usually you get like a ham sandwich that looks like that's been sitting somewhere for a couple of days, like the leftovers from a convenience store in the US — that's usually what the sandwiches look like on budget carriers. Nevertheless, on these, you're probably going to get pretty decent food. I'm going to look at the prices here. I actually had a video on ZipAir. Let me see if I can pull this up really quickly. ZipAir is — the airline here that they've been around now for a year or over a year now.

00:06:08 John Daub: And those airlines, I think I have a video I can pull up from them as well. Let me see if I can do that. That airline, ZipAir has released some videos on their own website that kind of go over the services. Oh, here it is right here. Let's see if I can pull this up. You can see that ZipAir is interesting because they actually have a business class that looks really decent. And when you have flights going over seven hours, you're going to want to get some sleep — in particular business travelers.

00:06:41 John Daub: So they offer that. They're basically flat seats. They're basic — you know, business travel is probably going to be flying the normal carriers. You've got the electrical charge ports. You can see there what the sleeping situation's like. The lavatories are also very nice. Not what you would think for budget. You know, this comes off of the ZipAir website and you see the bathrooms — even have like the washlets in there. Very, very nice, very Japanese. That's something that you would consider to be a budget airline.

00:07:14 John Daub: But they've taken away some of the things that made the flights too heavy — entertainment systems, things like that have been taken away, stripped down. The seats are still quite comfortable. It looks like you have those headrests where you can still kind of get some sleep. A lot of people don't know that there's tabs on the side of most of the headrests where you can shape them and make them into something like a pillow. Even the economy seats have USB outlets, which is really cool.

00:07:46 John Daub: And the seats, again, looks all brand new and clean. The small tray is enough to eat an epi bend, but they designed it for tablets in mind so you could bring your own entertainment. Most people do that anyways. Leo has his own tablet as well. Mostly kids. And they have what looks like older JAL flights, planes reconditioned into budget airlines. More seats. Again, like if you're coming from the west coast, what is that, like 10 hours or so? It's a pretty comfortable situation.

00:08:17 John Daub: And I think on this kind of flight and what they've done with the seats, they're kind of redefining what budget airline is. Now the prices — this is — and I'm going to go over this press release from AirJapan and we're going to talk about them in a second. But the prices for the airlines, it looks like, I don't know what you would consider budget, but it looks like it's about 30% cheaper than the normal — 30 to 50% depending on the day. And I actually pulled up some of the prices here.

00:08:49 John Daub: Let's take a look at that. Here's the first one. So this is just off of Google for a generic non-holiday period. You can see this is going to LAX in Los Angeles. The cheapest airline is ZipAir at 113,000 yen, which is what, like $700 for a round trip? That's really good. So if you could get your way to Los Angeles, you could get a like $700 round trip ticket to Japan. That's pretty good. The next one up is United, which is 20,000 yen or another $120 more — about and then you have ANA, which is actually pretty good. So you know what, I don't know. I might just take that ANA flight and just pay an extra 20,000 yen because I get the miles.

00:09:54 John Daub: First of all, because I'm an ANA — I've got a frequent flyer card for ANA and I'm a bronze member. You know, I might just take the miles. If it's just 20,000 yen more, that's like $120 more. And the flight, the seats are a little bit more comfortable and you have better entertainment. It seems to go by a little quicker. And you're definitely going to get food. So maybe that pays for itself. I don't know. It's a close one. But the ZipAir does — I was a little surprised by that.

00:10:25 John Daub: And then if you look at some of the other flights here, let me pull this one up. This one's going to Singapore. Scoot Airline is the budget airline for Southeast Asia. So you got some pretty darn good deals to Singapore. 45,000 yen or what's that, like $300 right now? Round trip to Singapore. That's crazy. Again, those are direct flights too, right? 6 hours and 35 minutes. You have here, ZipAir also doing it and that's just a little bit more. Wow, it looks like it's a lot more. 67,000, and then you have the normal JAL flight which is 92,000. So in that case, I think because it is like a six-hour, seven-hour flight, ZipAir might be the way to go. I mean if you just need to get a flight and a daytime flight, if it's a redeye, you might want to get the sleep on the JAL flight — the seats might be a little bit more comfortable.

00:10:56 John Daub: So it's interesting to look at the prices here. Let's look at one more. This one is from Singapore to Narita with other flights and you can see ANA it would be 114,000. That's pretty high. And if you look at the Air China, there's Shenzhen, it's 51. But a stopover in Shenzhen, which could be interesting. It's a beautiful modern city if you get a chance to take a look. And Singapore Airlines 107,000. So that's quite a contrast. It's half price between Singapore Airlines and Scoot.

00:11:27 John Daub: You can see here. I don't know, I would probably use that money towards eating really well in Singapore. But according to the press release here, and this comes from NHK World — AirJapan, a subsidiary of Japan's aviation conglomerate ANA Holdings has begun flights between Narita near Tokyo and Bangkok, Thailand. The new brand — new operates the new brand operates mid-distance international routes between full service and low cost carriers. So it's not — it's like a tweener. It's not an LCC low cost carrier but it's not a full flight like ANA.

00:12:03 John Daub: So I'm guessing that the prices are going to be somewhere in between. But here's the thing: more competition, more flights means that prices normally will go down if demand is the same. So as long as demand for these flights stays the same or just goes up a little bit, the prices should be driven down by 2025. Now ANA and JAL are sort of going to be in like a low cost carrier or a mid cost carrier war for this market. And Southeast Asia is one of the more growing markets.

00:12:33 John Daub: The economies look like they might be better positioned than the US and some other markets. Canada is not doing as well as it used to in the past. If you watch the political situation there. It's not — nobody can afford housing and inflation's been really rampant in Canada. So it's harder times right now in North America. But Southeast Asia looks like the up and up. In 2019, there was like a real boom in Thailand and Malaysia and Singapore for visitors coming to Japan.

00:13:05 John Daub: And I would say that Southeast Asia might have more visitors coming to Japan than North America. The United States growing, but it really depends on the economy. It's quite a long flight. But ZipAir does have those flights going to the US back and forth and that is driving prices down. But the demand from North America is still quite high. But they're seeing — like ANA, that the Southeast Asian market is going to be — it's interesting. Here they call these hybrids.

00:13:35 John Daub: This brand is a hybrid. It's not a low cost carrier and it's not ANA. It's a hybrid of the two. So I thought that that was really interesting. Peach Airlines is also, I think, ANA and that's a low cost carrier that operates within Japan and maybe some basic international flights. But I'm guessing that AirJapan will start to increase its reach into Vancouver, into the west coast and maybe they have a — you know, a cheap flight to Chicago or something because ANA has partnered with United in that air alliance.

00:14:08 John Daub: What is it called? Not One World, the other one. I used to fly that one all the time. I just fly pretty much — ANA. And Star Alliance. There you go. So I'm going to say that AirJapan is just in its infancy, just starting to grow, which I think this is sort of big news. I am — Ray recently moved back to Canada after living in Japan for three years. And yes, I second that, John. The state living is horrible here. I'm not a political person, but I don't know, I'm not a Trudeau fan. Not at all. After watching a little bit of Canadian politics, I don't know, it's pretty tough going.

00:14:40 John Daub: So here's a — this comes from AirJapan and this is the flights, the pricing for it. This is going to Singapore, I believe. Yeah. So simple fare is 15,500 Japanese. This is a steal. And this is going the other way from Narita to Bangkok. 17,000 yen. That is a steal. They really want people coming from Thailand to take this flight. I think it's going to be mostly Thais and people coming through Bangkok that fly AirJapan. Not Japanese per se. But we will see what happens. It just started.

00:15:15 John Daub: One way for the selected is 23,800 Japanese yen or what is that? 100. That is cheap. Can you believe that? $150 one way to Bangkok from Narita. It makes you almost want to — it makes you almost want to take a side trip from Tokyo. It's like, you know what, I'm gonna do? Three weeks in Japan, I'm gonna spend one of that week in Thailand. You get better, better beaches over there.

00:15:46 John Daub: All right, let's see what the other one is. Here I have — this is Bangkok and let's look at Singapore. Now this is — oh, this is the one going from Singapore and Changi and — sorry. And Seoul. It's 8 what one way for 8,000 yen up to 12,600 yen. I could see a lot of people flying into Japan that want to go to Seoul, Korea maybe taking this because it is a steal and it's only like what is it? Less than 2 hour flight to Seoul from Tokyo. So flying a budget airline makes a lot of sense.

00:16:17 John Daub: There's no reason that you need to go full service for a flight less than two hours. It's just a bare bones — I'll take a subway plastic seat to go two hours. If I could save half price on it and use that money for food or something, you know, if that option does exist, unless it's business and someone else is paying, well then I'll take the first class. This is from April 26th. So the route to Singapore is written right there. 7. Wow, that is so cheap for one way.

00:16:48 John Daub: So this is going to be really disruptive. That's competing with Scoot and Scoot is ridiculously cheap. And they're offering this as a mid-range, I don't know. And there's a price for over 7 years old and under 7 and then kids, 5,000 yen one way. Really? To Singapore. Hey, Singapore. I'll see you guys in sometime really soon after April. That's that cheap? That's pretty good. That's pretty good. I'm impressed. I'm very impressed.

00:17:21 John Daub: So you have on the right side or on the left side depending on how you're seeing this — ZipAir versus AirJapan. I guess this is only going to get more competitive and you don't have to fly JAL and ANA anymore. You have options. And this is going to drive the price down for those in Europe with — you know, the war going on and the routes altered and the price of fuel and all this other stuff. You know, I feel really bad for those — but it seems to make sense to fly Emirates and you might as well stop in Dubai and stop in the middle for a night and enjoy yourself there.

00:17:58 John Daub: If the economics of it makes sense because the one way nonstop trips are kind of pricey right now. I had some people telling me Lufthansa was really high. The Japan carriers — we flew twice to Vienna on ANA. The flights are never really full. So you know, the demand from Europe to come to Japan is really not that high. Which would be another reason — if demand is not so high, they're not going to do budget airlines from Europe to Japan. I think that demand needs to really increase or it just doesn't make a lot of sense.

00:18:33 John Daub: But whenever we took at Christmas time the flights from Haneda to Vienna, it was like 100,000 yen or what is that, like $700 round trip. They were never full. And I was able to make almost like my own row to sleep on. It's a comfortable flight, that one. So I'm not sure. And that's a fairly reasonable price — $1,400 dollars round trip from Vienna back then. But we'll see what the prices from Europe come to in the next — by 2025. But it doesn't look like it's going to be good for 2024.

00:19:05 John Daub: Seems like the West coast and the US and the Southeast Asian market are going to be the first to really get a price reduction to Japan and then we'll see what happens. Honolulu, of course is going to be competitive with more flights coming back and forth. The demand from the Japanese side is not there — not a lot of Japanese are going to the United States because of the exchange rate. So we're hoping that those flights — the demand goes up. And you know, I want you all — and I'm going to keep doing this because I think it is really important.

00:19:40 John Daub: I talk about the numbers, I do live streams every two or three months about the number of people that come to Japan, the tourist numbers. This is so significant, you know, because this will also tell you about if the travel industry sees an opportunity, they're going to increase flights based on the numbers coming in. And there's a lot of tourists coming into Japan, so the demand is there. But this is the thing that disturbs me and worries me. Aloha, Michael. Yes, it is super exciting. Thank you for that.

00:20:10 John Daub: The thing that worries me the most is that Japanese are not traveling at all. So there's this double edged sword which was great for the Japanese carriers. They had a lot of — Japanese love to travel abroad because we live on a small island. But Japanese right now aren't traveling abroad because the exchange rates are so high. In particular, they're not traveling to the US and Europe. So we will see what happens.

00:20:41 John Daub: And Honolulu was virtually empty with Japanese tourists when I was there last year. So we'll see how this shapes up. But it doesn't seem like the US is adding incentives for any tourists to come in legally. So I could — alright everybody. A lot of Westerners are like "Japan is not doing a good job to keep the prices low or attract us to come to." Is the US really making any push at all for the other way around? No. And Canada isn't as aggressive as Japan is with trying to attract tourists and now they're at like the top five travel destinations in the world.

00:21:17 John Daub: Do they really need to make the JR Rail pass cheaper? If you don't want to come, don't come. They're still going to sell a lot of them. But I still think these budget airlines are really cool and this is going to drive down the prices. So keep your fingers crossed. Do fly AirJapan if you get a chance to and support them because I think if they can see a bud flower into a garden, they'll invest more into mid to low cost carrier flights and that will get you here to Japan and then from there we can hang out maybe.

00:21:50 John Daub: There you go. Hope you enjoyed it. If this was useful, hit the like button and leave me a comment below. I love the comments. Go to our Discord server if you're traveling around Japan because we got a lot of information, including travelers that are right now in Japan traveling around sharing information. We also have people who live here in Japan sharing information. I might not be able to answer you all the time, but there is somebody on the Discord server 24/7 and it's free.

00:22:21 John Daub: You just have to download Discord which is now becoming as popular — well, let's just say they're so popular they went to the congressional testimony on social media and stuff like that. So Discord's in the discussion. If you've never heard of them and there's still people who haven't — do check it out. I think — what is it? Discord — OnlyInJapan and we'll get you into our server. I think there's 17 or 18,000 now, which is good. Keep growing and I'll do another live stream tomorrow to talk about futon because we had to get new futon which are beddings in Japan for Japanese housings.

00:22:59 John Daub: And I'll go over that because it's kind of interesting — furnishing a Japanese house. It's a little bit different way to think than you would for a Western house. So I think getting our new futons and setting them up might be kind of interesting to learn about that. All right, everybody, I don't think I missed anything except — oh, just a heads up as I show you Tokyo here. Peso and I — Peso's here in the chat. We set up a Texas based phone number where you can call in.

00:23:30 John Daub: Right now we're just going to extend it to Patreon supporters and community members, travelers and insiders where you can just dial up on your phone. And if you have a phone plan that allows you to, you can leave me a message and a travel question. 20 seconds or less. I'm announcing it now, but not the number — just for Patreon supporters for the first couple of weeks and then I'll announce it publicly again. 20 seconds or less. End it by saying your name and where you're from.

00:24:01 John Daub: For example: "Hey John, my wife and I are coming to Tokyo and would like to know if you have any recommendations for hotels in the Asakusa area. This is Mimi from Miami." Just hang up. That's all you have to do. And I will get the message, we'll get the file and then we'll be able to play them in the live streams and I'll be able to answer your questions. It's kind of cool. I like that old style 1990s vending answering machine type of way to communicate.

00:24:32 John Daub: And it's pretty user friendly. You just have to make a call. 20 seconds is a — look, if it's more than 20 seconds for one question, then I think it's too long for me to play it. Just keep it simple because nobody wants to hear — one of the things with the live stream when I have people calling in — one of the things is that it gets way too long and it becomes a discussion. The phone is really just for a question — one question. And if you mess up, it's okay. You could leave another one.

00:25:04 John Daub: I'll just take the better one. But maybe — but we're gonna work on seeing and trying to improve this. Maybe give you a chance to confirm it and then you could redo it if you wanted, two, three times. But the longer you're on the phone, the more expensive it's going to get on our side as well because this isn't a free service. It's not expensive, but it's not free. So I do appreciate everybody. We're going to see how this goes with our — I appreciate everybody calling.

00:25:34 John Daub: I will try this out with our Patreon supporters first and see how it works. It's kind of cool. It's kind of cool where you can do that. All right, everybody, thanks. Thanks for letting me explain about that. And I'll see you in another live stream tomorrow as we talk about futon or something. We'll see what we can do. But a lot of interesting content coming in February, including some main channel episodes right on the way. That's where I'm going back to edit right now.

00:26:05 John Daub: Have a good day, everybody. Enjoy the sunshine. Stay warm. Matane.