Northwest Airlines is to base a fleet of three Airbus A320s at Tokyo Narita in Japan from 18 April for use on intra-Asian flights from the airport's shorter second runway, which is due to open the same month.
The US carrier serves 11 Asian cities through its Tokyo transpacific gateway using Boeing 747s and McDonnell Douglas DC-10s, but requires smaller aircraft to take up the 28 additional weekly take-off and landing slots it has been given for the new 2,180m-long runway.
Using the A320s, Northwest will exploit its fifth freedom rights to launch daily services to Kaohsiung in Taiwan and Pusan in South Korea.
Source: Flight International
