Alaska Airlines’ Anchorage–Tokyo nonstop will fly on a narrow-body 737 from May 13

Alaska Airlines is sending a narrow-body jet across the Pacific. The Seattle-based carrier announced Tuesday that it will launch its first nonstop flight from Anchorage to Tokyo’s Narita airport on May 13, 2027 — a roughly 3,400-mile crossing flown by a Boeing 737 MAX 8 rather than a wide-body.

The Tokyo service is the centerpiece of a four-route expansion at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC). The full slate, all on the same MAX 8:

• Anchorage to Tokyo (NRT): daily from May 13 through Sept. 7, 2027, then three times a week starting in January 2028
• Anchorage to Austin: Saturdays from June 12 through Aug. 7, 2027
• Anchorage to Dallas Fort Worth: Saturdays from June 12 through Aug. 7, 2027
• Anchorage to Nashville: Saturdays from June 12 through Aug. 7, 2027

The catch: it’s a domestic-style cabin

There is no long-haul business-class product up front. The MAX 8 seats 16 in domestic first class, 36 in extra-legroom and 115 in standard economy — meaning passengers get recliner-style first seats, not lie-flats, on the roughly eight-hour crossing.

The configuration still makes history: Alaska will be the first airline to fly the MAX 8 to Narita from North America. Executives have been signaling the bet. “The [MAX] 8 is so good at going long distances for us,” Shane Tackett, Alaska’s president and chief financial officer, said in September. “Anchorage will see a lot of that.”

Competition is thin. Alaska’s partner American already flies Anchorage–Dallas Fort Worth, but Austin and Nashville have no incumbent, and nobody currently flies the Tokyo route.

The Anchorage–Tokyo leg is unserved today, though it has real aviation history. Air France, British Airways, JAL, KLM and SAS all stopped at Anchorage to refuel en route to Japan until the early 1990s, before the Boeing 747-400 allowed nonstop Pacific crossings.

For Alaska, the flight deepens a Japan push that began with last year’s Seattle–Narita route and continues with new Seattle–Osaka service next spring, building on the 2024 merger with Hawaiian Airlines.