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Japan Airlines has temporarily suspended its codeshare with British Airways on flights between Europe and Japan.
BA & Japan Airlines’ Joint Business
BA, Finnair and Japan Airlines operate a joint business between Europe and Japan.
The three airlines codeshare on each other’s flights and offer reciprocal local connections.
Following sanctions imposed against Russia by the UK and the European Union, and retaliatory measures, Finnair has suspended all flights between Helsinki and Tokyo as these fly over Russian airspace.
BA had already temporarily suspended flights to Tokyo Haneda for commercial reasons. The airline is due to restart these on 30 March 2022.
Japan Airlines continues to fly between Europe and Japan over Russian airspace. It has only suspended flights between Tokyo Haneda and Moscow.
Japan Airlines Suspends Codeshares with BA & Finnair
Japan Airlines will no longer carry codeshare passengers of BA and Finnair between Europe and Japan until at least Monday 28 March 2022.
This covers not only Japan Airlines flights from London to Tokyo Haneda, but also its flights from Frankfurt, Helsinki and Paris Charles de Gaulle.
In a statement released to Bloomberg, Japan Airlines says it has done this unilaterally to protect itself from carrying passengers of European codeshare partners. This is presumably a reference to the risk of being denied access to Russian airspace.
Passenger Rebooking
At the time of publication, Japan Airlines flights from Europe are still on sale at ba.com. These should be pulled shortly.
It may take a couple of days for BA to confirm arrangements to accommodate passengers. These are likely to involve flying via another BA gateway in Asia, which will involve extended journey times.
Given the highly uncertain nature of current events, this situation could be prolonged.
Update
BA has withdrawn all codeshare flights with Japan Airlines between Europe and Tokyo until at least Sunday 27 March 2022.
Separately, Finnair will fly between Helsinki and Tokyo Narita four times weekly from Tuesday 9 March 2022. The flights will operate outside of Russian airspace, with a considerably longer journey time of around 13 hours.
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