Domestic Flights in Japan: ANA, JAL, Peach and the Tokyo and Osaka Hubs

Somewhere between a rail map with too many colored lines and a departures board at Haneda, travelers in Japan stop and ask whether a plane belongs in the plan. The short answer is that Japan has several airlines built around the Tokyo and Osaka airports, and the full-service pair, All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines, sit alongside a low-cost carrier named Peach. Knowing who they are and where they base themselves is the first step in deciding.

A jet at a Japanese airport · Illustration

When does it make sense to fly inside Japan?

Flying makes sense when the airline network, rather than the rail map, is what connects the two places you have in mind, and the way to judge that is to know where the airlines are centered. Japan Airlines uses Tokyo’s Narita and Haneda airports as its main hubs. That means a trip that begins or ends in Tokyo can slot into JAL’s network without a separate leg to reach another airport.

Osaka is the second anchor. JAL keeps secondary hubs at Kansai and Itami, the two airports that serve the Osaka area. A traveler building a route that touches Tokyo and Osaka will therefore meet the same carrier at both ends, which is a useful thing to notice when comparing options.

Starting from the Tokyo airports

Tokyo has two airports in the picture, Haneda and Narita, and both appear in the airline facts. ANA flies from both to Honolulu, which it describes as its only remaining resort routes. JAL treats both as its main hubs. For anyone landing from the United States and continuing within Japan, this is the practical meaning of the two names: they are the doors through which the big carriers organize their flying.

Which of the two you arrive at changes your first hours in the country, so it is worth knowing that both carry the weight of the national airlines rather than one being a minor field. A connection on the same airline keeps you inside one network, and that is the situation where a domestic flight starts to look natural.

Starting from the Osaka airports

Kansai and Itami give Osaka two airports with different roles in JAL’s network, both listed as secondary hubs behind the Tokyo pair. If your trip has Kyoto, Nara or Kobe in it, Osaka’s airports are the ones that matter, and JAL is the carrier whose presence there is described.

Rather than treating the flight as a stand-alone decision, think of it as a link between hubs. A line from a Tokyo airport to an Osaka airport, or from either to one of the other cities on the JAL map, is the kind of connection these airlines are organized to provide.

How big the domestic network is

JAL serves sixty domestic destinations, a figure that excludes codeshare agreements. Its subsidiaries together operate more than twenty-six thousand domestic flights every month.

ANA describes itself as serving over one hundred domestic and international destinations combined. The two numbers are not directly comparable, since one counts domestic points only and the other mixes both kinds. What they share is the message that Japan’s two large airlines each reach well past Tokyo and Osaka.

Which airlines fly domestic routes?

Three names come up: All Nippon Airways (ANA), Japan Airlines (JAL) and Peach Aviation, a low-cost carrier based in Japan. ANA and JAL are the two large Tokyo-headquartered airlines, and Peach is the budget alternative.

Airline	Headquarters
All Nippon Airways (ANA)	Minato, Tokyo
Japan Airlines (JAL)	Shinagawa, Tokyo
Peach Aviation	Japan

All Nippon Airways

ANA is headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, and has belonged to Star Alliance since October 1999. For travelers who collect miles on a Star Alliance partner at home, that membership is the thing to connect to ANA. Its inflight magazine is called Wingspan, and it is also available as a free iPad app named Virtual Airport.

The airline’s international story began on March 3, 1986, with a scheduled service from Tokyo to Guam. Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., followed before the end of that same year, so American travelers have been part of ANA’s story from the start. Today its only remaining resort routes run from Haneda and Narita to Honolulu.

A few touches show up in the airline’s own history. Since February 2010 it has offered women’s-only lavatories on international flights, and its first Boeing 787 passenger flight, on October 26, 2011, was a charter from Narita to Hong Kong.

Japan Airlines

JAL is headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo, and belongs to the Oneworld alliance. Its main hubs are Narita and Haneda, with Kansai and Itami as secondary hubs in Osaka. A traveler who earns miles with an Oneworld airline will recognize the alliance and can look to JAL as the Japanese partner.

The airline lists sixty domestic destinations and thirty-nine international ones. On its Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, Business Class has Sky Suite seats in a staggered 2-3-2 setup with direct aisle access. That detail concerns the long-haul cabin rather than domestic legs, but it tells you how the airline presents its premium product.

Peach Aviation

Peach is a low-cost airline based in Japan. It is the third name on the list, and the one that sets a different style of flying from the two full-service carriers: a budget airline against two airlines with alliance memberships and hub networks.

How do you book?

Booking starts with choosing an airline, and the choice is easiest to make from what each one is: a Star Alliance member, a Oneworld member or a low-cost carrier. The three families lead to three different ways of thinking about a domestic leg.

Think in alliances first

If you already hold miles or status with an alliance, ANA connects to Star Alliance and JAL to Oneworld. That is a reason to begin with one name rather than the other, and it fits the way travelers plan, starting from the airline program they know and then looking at where it goes.

The two carriers also present themselves differently in print. ANA’s Wingspan magazine travels on board and on a tablet app, while JAL leads with the layout of its long-haul cabins. Each of those is a clue to how the airline sees itself, and it can help you decide which brand feels right before you reach a booking page.

Think in airports

Airports shape a booking more than travelers expect. A ticket that leaves from Haneda is a different thing from one that leaves from Narita, and in Osaka the same applies to Itami and Kansai. Each name in a booking tells you which airport you will be standing in, so read it carefully when you compare options.

For JAL, those four airports are exactly the hubs: Narita and Haneda as the main pair, Kansai and Itami behind them. When a route passes through one of those names, you are on familiar ground for that airline.

Where Peach fits

A low-cost carrier changes the rhythm of a booking, because the airline is built around a lean product, and Peach is the one named as such.

What you can do from here is arrive with the right questions: which airport, which alliance, which style of airline. With those three answered, a domestic flight in Japan stops being a vague idea and becomes a specific route on a specific carrier.

Good to know before you go

The U.S. State Department rates Japan Level 1: Exercise Normal Precautions.

Two Tokyo airports, two in Osaka and three airlines are the names to carry with you. ANA pairs with Star Alliance, JAL with Oneworld, and Peach stands apart as the low-cost choice. Having those straight makes any flight search clearer, and it saves you from mixing up Haneda with Narita or Itami with Kansai.

Sources

Wikipedia, All Nippon Airways (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Nippon_Airways), checked October 11, 2026
Wikipedia, Japan Airlines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines), checked October 11, 2026
Wikipedia, Peach (airline) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peach_(airline)), checked October 11, 2026
U.S. Department of State, Japan travel advisory (https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/japan-travel-advisory.html)