Japan's biggest airline still carries the code of a 1952 helicopter startup
The letters NH on every All Nippon Airways ticket are a fossil. They come from Nippon Helicopter, a small company founded in December 1952 whose first scheduled flight carried freight between Osaka and Tokyo in a de Havilland Dove. For decades afterwards, ANA was barred from scheduled international routes altogether.
Two ancestors merged to form it. Japan Helicopter and Aeroplane Transports began on 27 December 1952 and started helicopter work in February 1953; on 15 December that year its Dove flew cargo from Osaka to Tokyo, the first scheduled flight by a Japanese pilot in postwar Japan. Passengers followed on 1 February 1954. Far East Airlines, founded a day earlier than its future partner, did not fly until 20 January 1954, running night cargo on the same corridor. Nippon Helicopter renamed itself All Nippon Airways in December 1957, absorbed Far East in March 1958, and at 600 million yen of market value became the nation's largest private carrier, since Japan Airlines was state-owned.
Growth came at home. The Boeing 727 trijet brought jets to the Tokyo-Sapporo route in 1965, though regulators first insisted JAL buy 727s too. By 1974 ANA had the largest domestic network in the country. The government gave JAL a monopoly on scheduled international service until 1986, so ANA's first overseas trip was a charter to Hong Kong on 21 February 1971. Its first widebodies, six Lockheed L-1011s ordered in November 1971, came after a sales push that drew in Richard Nixon, Kakuei Tanaka and Edward Heath.
Scheduled flights abroad finally began on 3 March 1986 with Tokyo to Guam, and Los Angeles and Washington followed that year. London arrived in 1989, New York and Singapore in 1991, and Star Alliance membership in October 1999. In 2004 ANA out-earned JAL for the first time, and Air Transport World named it 2007 airline of the year.
Some episodes were quirkier. A Woody Woodpecker jet promoted Universal Studios Japan in 2001, and a 2009 campaign asked passengers to use the restroom before boarding. Today ANA serves more than 100 destinations from Haneda and Narita, employs about 12,800 people, and fully owns budget carrier Peach Aviation.
Source: All Nippon Airways
