ANA, All Nippon Airways is a Japanese airline belonging to Star Alliance. Along with JAL(Japan Airlines), ANA serves both international and domestic flights. Although it flied short international charter flights, ANA had a long period flying just domestic routes till 1985. By the way, IATA airline code NH comes from the former name of the company, Nippon Helicopter.
The reason was that the government policy introduced in 1972. There were just 3 airlines in Japan and just one. JAL can operate international routes. Therefore, ANA was maintained to fly domestic major and local routes only. This policy was to protect airline industry in Japan and not making each airline to compete others.
Finally the policy was abolished in 1985 due to high demand of air traffics. If Japan insists only JAL to operate international routes, but allow multiple international airlines to fly between Japan and foreign airports, it will damage the national interest of Japan. The first international route was Tokyo Narita - Guam in 1986.
Before COVID-19, ANA operated total 68 international routes between Tokyo Haneda/Tokyo Narita/Osaka Kansai and airports in abroad. The domestic routes are covering throughout Japan and especially dominating the routes in Hokkaido. On the other hand, flights to airports in islands of Okinawa and Kagoshima prefectures are dominated by JAL group.
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