At the end of last month, I wrote about Vanilla Air’s intention to launch flights between the Japanese city of Fukuoka and Taipei Taoyuan airport in Taiwan. With the airline opening the flight for reservations yesterday, the details of the route are now known.
JW151/158: Fukuoka – Taipei Taoyuan and Back
Interestingly, the Japan-bound Taipei – Fukuoka flight (JW158) will operate for the first time on March 25, 2018, while the Fukuoka – Taipei flight (JW151) will start a day later – on March 26, 2018.
From then on, the flights will be operated daily with slight differences in timing depending on the day of the week.
Flight JW151 from Fukuoka to Taipei Taoyuan will operate with the following schedule:
- Monday & Wednesday: depart at 9:30AM and arrive at 11:00AM
- Tuesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday:Â depart at 8:55AM and arrive at 10:25AM
- Sunday:Â depart at 9:15AM and arrive at 10:45AM
The return flight, JW158 from Taipei Taoyuan to Fukuoka, will operate as follows:
- Monday through Saturday: depart at 4:55PM and arrive at 8:15PM
- Sunday:Â depart at 5:10PM and arrive at 8:30PM
All of the flights will be operated by the sole aircraft type in Vanilla Air’s fleet, the Airbus A320-200.
While the new route will be the first time for Vanilla Air to fly out of Fukuoka – and the first time in almost a decade for a Japanese airline to operate international services – it will not be the first time for Vanilla Air to connect Japan and Taiwan.
The airline currently operates the following four routes between the two countries:
- Naha – Taipei Taoyuan (daily)
- Osaka Kansai – Taipei Taoyuan (daily)
- Tokyo Narita – Kaohsiung (daily)
- Tokyo Narita – Taipei Taoyuan (4 times a day)
Separately, Vanilla Air also operates daily flights between Taipei and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam as a tag-on to its flights JW105/102 between Tokyo Narita and Taipei. However, the last of those flights will operate on March 24, 2018 – one day before the launch of the new route from Fukuoka.
