St. Louis to Tokyo Haneda Flights (STL to HND): Connections, Flight Time and Getting into Tokyo

Which hub gets you from St. Louis to Haneda

There is no nonstop from St. Louis to Tokyo, so every STL to HND itinerary connects once in a US hub. Haneda is the better Tokyo airport for most visitors, close to the city and well served from the US, but the choice of hub decides how long your day is and which airline you fly across the Pacific.

As of recent schedules, the main one-stop options are:

• American or Japan Airlines via Dallas/Fort Worth or Chicago O'Hare. Both hubs have Haneda nonstops operated by American or by its partner Japan Airlines, and both are short hops from St. Louis.
• United or ANA via Chicago O'Hare. United and ANA fly O'Hare to Haneda. United also connects through Houston, Washington Dulles and San Francisco, all with Haneda service.
• Delta via Detroit, Minneapolis or Atlanta. Delta moved its Tokyo flying to Haneda and serves it from several hubs; Detroit and Minneapolis are the shortest overall routings from St. Louis.

If you see a cheaper fare into Narita instead, remember that Narita is about an hour further from central Tokyo. For a hotel in the city, Haneda is usually worth a modest premium.

Flight time and distance, both ways

St. Louis to Tokyo Haneda is roughly 6,400 miles (about 10,300 km) on the great circle, which runs north over Canada and Alaska rather than straight across the Pacific. There is no nonstop to quote, so think in total trip time: 16 to 20 hours door to door with a reasonable connection.

The transpacific leg is the long one. Chicago or Detroit to Haneda is typically 13 to 14 hours westbound, Dallas about 13, Minneapolis around 12.5. Coming home, the eastbound flights are two to three hours shorter with the jet stream behind them, but you lose a night because most of them leave Tokyo in the late afternoon or evening and land in the US the same calendar day.

Going west you cross the date line, so a departure on Tuesday afternoon from St. Louis lands in Tokyo on Wednesday afternoon or evening local time.

Leaving from St. Louis Lambert

Lambert has two terminals. American, United, Delta, Alaska and Air Canada use Terminal 1; Southwest uses Terminal 2. The terminals are a few minutes apart by the free shuttle, and MetroLink has a station at each one, so you can reach either from downtown or Clayton without a car.

For a domestic first leg, 90 minutes to two hours before departure is comfortable; Lambert security is rarely the problem on this route. Ask for your bags to be checked through to Haneda and confirm your Tokyo arrival terminal on the tag. Keep medication, chargers and a change of clothes in your carry-on, because the connection in Chicago or Dallas is the point where a bag is most likely to miss the onward flight.

One Lambert note: midwinter storms in St. Louis and Chicago cause more missed connections on this route than anything in Japan. In January and February, favour the first flight of the day from St. Louis and a connection of two hours or more.

Arriving at Haneda and getting into Tokyo

All international flights use Haneda's Terminal 3, which is compact and quick to clear if you have completed the Visit Japan Web registration in advance. The QR codes it produces replace the paper immigration and customs forms, and the queues move in minutes rather than the half-hour you can face without them.

Haneda sits on Tokyo Bay about 15 km from the centre, and it is one of the easiest big-city airports to leave:

• Tokyo Monorail. From Terminal 3 to Hamamatsucho on the Yamanote loop in under 20 minutes, with connections to Tokyo Station, Shinjuku and Shibuya.
• Keikyu Line. To Shinagawa in about 15 minutes, then the Yamanote Line or shinkansen. Also runs direct trains through to Asakusa and Narita.
• Limousine bus. Direct to Shinjuku, Shibuya, Tokyo Station and major hotels in 30 to 60 minutes depending on traffic. Easiest with heavy bags.
• Taxi. 30 to 45 minutes to central districts; fixed-fare taxis are available to many zones.

Trains run until around midnight. If your flight lands late, the limousine buses and taxis keep going, and Terminal 3 has a hotel attached for a very late arrival.

Best time to go and when to book

Japan's calendar sets the fare pressure. Cherry blossom season in late March and early April, Golden Week in late April and early May, Obon in mid-August and the New Year holiday are the busiest weeks, with seats from the Midwest sold out months ahead. Autumn, from mid-October to late November, brings clear skies and fall colour with softer demand, and January and February are cold, dry and the quietest months of the year.

June is rainy season and late August to October is typhoon season; a typhoon can shut Haneda for a day, so keep a buffer before any fixed-date event. Outside the peaks, booking six to ten weeks ahead usually gives you a sensible fare with a choice of hubs; for the peak weeks, three to five months ahead is realistic.

Entry rules for Japan

As of recent rules, US passport holders can visit Japan for short tourist stays without a visa, but rules change and other nationalities differ, so check the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan before you book. Your passport should be valid for the whole stay, and the airline in St. Louis may ask to see an onward or return ticket.

Japan restricts several medicines that are routine in the US, including some decongestants and stimulant prescriptions. If you take anything regularly, check the Japanese import rules before you pack and carry a doctor's letter where required.

Time zones and jet lag

Tokyo is UTC plus nine with no daylight saving. That makes it 15 hours ahead of St. Louis in winter and 14 hours ahead during Central Daylight Time. In practice it feels like going back nine or ten hours and skipping a day.

Westbound is the easier direction: you land in Japan in the afternoon or evening, can stay up to a normal bedtime, and most people adjust within three days. The return is harder, because you arrive in St. Louis in the morning after a short night and your body thinks it is late evening. Daylight, a walk and no long nap on the first day help more than anything else.

What travellers on this route get wrong

The common mistakes are booking a tight connection in Chicago in winter, skipping the Visit Japan Web registration and queueing for paper forms, and buying a Narita fare for a hotel in Shinjuku without pricing the extra hour each way. A smaller one: not loading a Suica or Pasmo card on your phone before landing, which makes the first train ride slower than it needs to be.