JAL, ANA lead airlines operating at Haneda Airport advising passengers on bag drop, gate closing times for domestic flights

A group of seven Japanese airlines operating at Haneda Airport have requested passengers to cooperate in observing gate closing times and earlier, stricter baggage drop cutoff times for domestic flights to ensure smooth passenger boarding and improve on-time performance.

The seven airlines include the two major Japanese airline groups All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines (JAL), along with Japan Transocean Air (JTA), Air Do, Skymark Airlines, Solaseed Air, and Starflyer. All the airlines have advised passengers departing on domestic flights at Haneda to arrive at the boarding gate ahead of the airline-designated closing times, and all airlines except for Skymark will set their new baggage drop cut-off time to 30 minutes before departure starting September.  

Image: Bag drop cut-off times for domestic departures at Haneda Airport. Credit: JAL

Domestic passengers departing Haneda on JAL and JTA flights already required to drop their bags 30 minutes ahead of the departure. Other airlines such as ANA, Air Do, Solaseed, Starflyer, and Skymark set their cut-off time at 20 minutes ahead of departure. Skymark will be the lone carrier to stay with the 20 minute bag drop cut-off time after September 1.

ANA customers departing on domestic flights from Haneda are currently required to clear security 20 minutes before departure, and be at the boarding gate 10 minutes before departure. JAL also requires passengers to be at the gate 10 minutes before departure on domestic flights from Haneda.

In their statement, the airlines wrote: “These efforts are based on the administrative notice from the Civil Aviation Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (dated March 19, 2026) and the industry-wide guidelines regarding carry-on baggage established by The Scheduled Airlines Association of Japan (SAAJ).”

The group both encourages compliance with designated gate closing times set by each airline, and to continuously review various operational cut-off times.

According to aviation data company Cirium, ANA has the best on-time performance rating in Japan and the 3rd overall in the Asia-Pacific in 2025 with 78.88% of its flights arriving on-time with 309,998 total flights. JAL is the 5th overall in the region with a rating of 78.25% from over 313,410 flights. The two Japanese carriers trail the best on-time airline the Asia-Pacific Philippine Airlines with its 83.12% rating from over 116,000 flights. Mexico’s Aeromexico was the best airline in terms of on-time performance in 2025 with a 90.02% rating with 188,859 total flights.