Thanks for your cooperation, ANA :)

In case you have missed the inaugural press conference, Dr. Inamori, Japan Airlines' new CEO, said one of the reasons he took the job is he wants to grow the Japanese economy by rebuilding JAL. And to do this, JAL and ANA needs to have a friendly rivalry and ANA's cooperation is important.

I was confused on how ANA can cooperate. And then on nikkei.com, I found an article about ANA on the same day of the press conference. After reading it, I fully understand how ANA can help. They can help by raising fares and cutting service LOL! According to the article, ANA will terminate the free drink service on domestic flights by the end of March 2010. The only drink that will remain free is water and green tea, which I think is more than enough and I think ANA is doing this to avoid being sued in case someone suffered from the economy class syndrome. If you want Startbucks coffee, ANA will be happy to sell you one. Juice? No problem, the premium juice will only cost you 500 yen for a glass.

This is even a step further than the US carriers who only charge for food but still provide free drinks on domestic flights. So what's next? Charge for checked baggage or the extra seat belt for sumo wrestlers? But sadly, JAL might follow this, at least on the LCC flights. There were rumors a while ago saying JAL is thinking of charging for drinks on the new LCC flights. I guess we will see. Now I see an opportunity for JAL. Just run a campaign and say you still serve freshly brewed coffee and Skytime for free on board LOL There should be some unhappy customers out there if ANA doesn't execute this right. Say if they serve the free drinks and paid ones at the same time, therefore taking forever to collect payments. This will mean some of the passengers might not even get served till the very end of the flight. Think about a 500+ seats 777-300 used on the 50 minute flight from Haneda to Itami :)

So, a big "thank you" to ANA for your cooperation and I like you more every time your cut a service and raise your price LOL