American Airline to cancel New york-Tokyo Haneda Service

American Airlines plans to discontinue to service from New York Kennedy to the close-in Tokyo Haneda International Airport on Dec. 1.
“While we are disappointed to end this route, our Tokyo/Haneda flight has been quite unprofitable, largely because we are allowed to operate only during severely restricted hours, limiting our customers’ options for connecting flights to and from other Asian markets,” American’s chief commercial officer Virasb Vahidi said in a special Jetwire to employees.

“Our decision to finally cancel the service followed multiple unsuccessful attempts to persuade the U.S. and Japanese governments to reach an agreement to eliminate all schedule constraints at Tokyo/Haneda,” he said.
UPDATE: AA chairman and CEO Tom Horton didn’t sound optimistic about the chances of American returning to Haneda anytime soon.
“If there were an opportunity to get better slot times at Haneda, we’d consider going back to it,” Horton said. “But right now, it was not a profitable flight and we couldn’t tolerate that any longer, and we fought that very hard.”
In addition, one of American’s JFK-London Heathrow flights will be turned over to Oneworld partner British Airways while AA finishes converting its Boeing 777-200 fleet to all lie-flat seats in its premium sections.