Saturday, March 15, 2014

Vanilla Air's 'LOHACO Jet' enters service.

Vanilla Air's (JW/VNL) first special livery 'LOHACO Jet' (Vanilla Air announces LOHACO logo jet.) entered service today on March 15th with flight JW903, service from Tokyo/Narita (NRT/RJAA) to Sapporo/New Chitose (CTS/RJCC). The aircraft is Airbus A320-211 JA8391, a secondhand example transferred from All Nippon Airways (NH/ANA).
Airbus A320-211 JA8391 'LOHACO Jet' parked at Narita. (Photo: Vanilla Air)

Their next (sixth) aircraft will be A320-211 JA8388, also coming from the same source. The trio of secondhand 22-to-23-year-old A320s retain ANA's 166-seat configuration and are a stopgap measure until Vanilla Air receives additional brand-new 180-seat A320s; JA04VA will arrive in September to replace JA8388, JA05VA will be delivered in October to succeed JA8391, and JA06VA is expected to supercede JA8385 in November.
A close-up of the LOHACO logo. (Photo: Vanilla Air)

What this also means is that Vanilla Air's fleet will stay at six at least until the end of this year. Last month, parent ANA Holdings announced that their Narita-based LCC will have eight aircraft by March 2015. It will be interesting to see what they decide on for the interior of the next batch of brand-new A320s, as the first three (JA01VA, JA02VA, JA03VA) basically have AirAsia-standard interiors, since they were intended for predecessor AirAsia Japan (Mk I) (JW/WAJ).

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