Tour of the ANA Maintenance Facilities

Published on : 04/07/2019
by : Japan Experience

Tour of the ANA Maintenance Facilities: ANA offers guided tours for visitors on almost all weekdays throughout the year at Haneda Airport, Tokyo.

Booking a Tour of the ANA Maintenance Facilities
Arriving at the ANA Maintenance Facilities
ANA Maintenance Facility Lobby
The Lecture
The Hangar Tour
Photo Rules
Access
Japan Aviation Museums

ANA Maintenance Facilities Tour Haneda Airport Tokyo ANA機体工場見学羽田空港東京

by Johannes Schonherr

ANA Maintenance Facilities Tour Haneda Airport, Japan ANA Maintenance Hangar, Haneda Airport, Tokyo

All Nippon Airways (ANA) is Japan's largest airline both in terms of revenue and passenger numbers. One of its main hubs, for domestic as well as international flights, is Haneda Airport in Tokyo.

At Haneda Airport, ANA also operates its huge airplane maintenance facilities. While many other international airlines consider their maintenance facilities as high security areas into which no outsider can set foot, ANA offers guided tours for visitors on almost all weekdays throughout the year.

On these tours, you get a close-up look at actual airplane maintenance in a huge industrial setting.

ANA Maintenance Facilities Tour Haneda Airport, Japan ANA plane taking off right outside the maintenance hangarExterior of the ANA Maintenance Facilities

Booking a Tour

The tours are for free, you have to register for them however. Only a limited amount of slots are available per tour.

ANA Maintenance Facility tours need to be booked via the Japanese-language website of ANA. Tours can be booked 6 months in advance. It seems however that commercial travel agencies block-book all those advance tour dates.

Therefore, the best time for booking individually is about 2 to 4 weeks before your visit. At that time, the travel agencies release their un-booked tour slots.

For a single traveler with a flexible schedule, it should be rather easy to book a tour within a week or so, for larger groups start checking about 4 weeks in advance - and keep up checking again and again to see if something becomes available. Then, you need to be fast.

The whole process has to be done in Japanese.

We need

-The full names of all participants (*note: any children must be OVER 6 years of age)

-Date of birth (day/month/year)
-the address and telephone number of your hotel/accommodation
-the time and day you wish to visit (there are tours at 9.30 am, 11 am, 1.30 pm and 3 pm, Monday to Friday)
-it's best to book the tours about 3 weeks in advance

ANA Maintenance Facilities Tour Haneda Airport, Tokyo, Japan In the lobby of the ANA Maintenance FacilitiesModel planes on display in the lobby of the ANA Maintenance Facilities

Arriving at the ANA Maintenance Facilities

Take the Tokyo Monorail connecting Hamamatsucho Station with Haneda Airport. Get off at Shin Seibijo Station, walk through the underground passage, then turn right.

The first building to your right is the JAL Maintenance Center 1. There, Japan Airlines (JAL), the main competitor of ANA, runs its own airplane maintenance tours.

You are booked for ANA, however. So, you need to walk on for about 10 minutes until you reach the ANA facilities.

Enter the building with a Seven-Eleven convenience store inside on the left side of the street. Uniformed guards on the street will give you directions.

You enter a large lobby with a counter. Behind the counter waits a lady dressed like an ANA flight attendant. You need to show her a print-out of your booking confirmation and a picture I.D. confirming your identity, your passport or your driving license for example.

She will then hand you your admission ticket attached to a strap. Put the strap around your neck and keep the ticket visible throughout the time of your visit.

ANA Maintenance Facilities Tour Haneda Airport, Tokyo, Japan Flight recorder (below, center) and other instruments on display, lobby of the ANA Maintenance FacilitiesANA Maintenance Hangar, Haneda Airport, Tokyo

ANA Maintenance Facility Lobby

The lobby of the building, essentially the waiting room for the tours, features the original cockpit of a 1974 Lockheed L1011 (feel free to sit down in the pilot seat). There are also a number of exhibits relating to the history of ANA.

There are model planes, flight recorders and other instruments, display boards spell out the most important dates in the history of the airline.

The Seven-Eleven inside the lobby offers not only the usual assortment of convenience store goods like bottled drinks and packed bento lunches but also a large variety of ANA-related memorabilia. Miniature planes and the like.

Plane under maintenance at the ANA hangarJet engine at the ANA Maintenance Hangar

The Lecture

At your specified time, you will be called into the lecture hall. Per tour, about 80 people attend the lecture.

A lady dressed in flight attendant garb will tell you in Japanese some facts about the maintenance hangars. "They are three times the size of Tokyo Dome", and so on.

If you don't understand Japanese, just sit quietly through the lecture. You won't miss much.

More interesting is the video that follows. It's subtitled in English and it shows the typical over-night maintenance and preparation process for an airplane coming in at night and leaving in the morning.

The cleaning, the checking of the mechanics, the fueling, the preparations by pilots and flight attendants. There is a whole lot of work going on before the passengers enter a plane.

The Hangar Tour

Once the video is over, the flight attendant in front will call out each visitor's name.

Raise your hand to confirm your presence and walk to the rear once your name comes up. There, you receive a color-coded helmet which indicates to which hangar tour group you belong. Each hangar tour group is made up of about 20 people.

You then proceed with your guide to the actual hangars. You enter the big halls and see the mechanics working on the large planes parked there.

How many planes there are and what type they are, depends on the time of your tour. The maintenance schedule is not public, so you will not know in advance about the planes you are going to see.

At the time I went on the tour, two large Boeing passenger planes as well as a large ANA Cargo Plane underwent maintenance.

The front wheel area of the cargo plane was crowded with young staff wearing yellow helmets. You learn during the lecture that not only the visitor helmets are color-coded, so are also the staff helmets. Yellow translates to rookie / in training.

Feel free to take any photo you want. If you want a photo of yourself / your family in the setting, just ask your tour guide. She will be happy to oblige.

The tour guide will talk non-stop in Japanese, explaining all sorts of things about the planes on site and the maintenance / plane repair process. You don't have to listen but you shouldn't stray too far from the tour group.

The tour will eventually take you to the open gates towards Landing / Take-off Strip A of Haneda Airport. From the gates, you get a good look at the planes in mid-air.

The tour will end at the same reception lobby you entered before the start of the tour. There, you can spend as much time as you want on choosing ANA miniature planes or other memorabilia as a souvenir sold at the Seven-Eleven.

Star Wars themed ANA plane taking off outside the maintenance hangarStar Wars themed ANA airplane seen from the maintenance hangar

Photo Rules

You are generally allowed to take any photo you want with a hand-held camera. Tripods and selfie sticks are prohibited, and so are video cameras.

If, however, you want to publish photos you have taken in the hangars, you are requested to first send the pictures in for approval to ANA. "Publishing" includes posting photos on Facebook or other social media.

The general rules are easy: photos showing staff or other visitors will not be approved. Photos of airplanes of other vehicles in for maintenance at the ANA facilities are also not allowed for publication.

Send the photos in to kengakuana..jp

All hangar pictures accompanying this text have been approved by ANA. It took less than a day to get the approval. Approval request and confirmation were handled in English.

Access

Booking: The only way to book an ANA Maintenance Facilities Tour is via the internet. Bookings start 6 months in advance.

Go to anafacilitytour.secure.force.com/afs to book the tour. The site is only in Japanese.

Admission is free.

Tours take place Monday to Friday at 9.30 am, 11 am, 1.30 pm and 3 pm. The facilities are closed on weekends and public holidays including the New Year Holidays.

Address: Tokyo, Ota-ku, Haneda Airport 3-5-4

Tel: 03 6700 2222

Website in Japanese www.ana.co.jp/cp/kengaku

Train

Go to Hamamatsucho Station on the Yamanote Line, change there to a Tokyo Monorail train. Get off at Shin Seibijo Station. The station has only one exit. After leaving the station exit tunnel, turn right and walk straight ahead. The walk to the ANA Maintenance Facilities takes about ten minutes.

Shin Seibijo Station is only one stop from Haneda International and Haneda Domestic Terminal, respectively.

Walking from either terminal is not an option, however. The Monorail crosses under various take-off / landing strips by tunnel, walking would mean to hike all around them on roads not designated for pedestrian traffic.