Japan Airlines registers its Airbus A350-1000s JA01WJ, JA02WJ and so on, and the numbers follow the order the aircraft arrived. That turns a registration into a small piece of history you can read straight off a radar screen. On 27 September 2026 my desk unit showed the first of them, and one source says the tenth, in the same afternoon.

The first: JA01WJ

JA01WJ is manufacturer serial number 610, according to ch-aviation. Airline Geeks reports that it left Airbus's Toulouse site at 1:46pm local time on 14 December 2023, bound for Tokyo Haneda, after a delivery ceremony.

Its entry into service slipped from the end of 2023 to 24 January 2024, ch-aviation says, on Haneda to New York JFK. Both sites describe it as the first of 13 A350-1000s ordered by Japan Airlines, which are due to replace its Boeing 777-300ERs on long-haul routes.

The cabin has 239 seats, according to both sources: six First, 54 Business, 24 Premium Economy and 155 Economy.

The numbers climb

Japan Aviation Hub reported the fifth, JA05WJ, leaving Toulouse on 10 August 2024 and reaching Haneda the next day. At that point five were delivered and eight were still to come.

Aviation A2Z reported the tenth, JA10WJ, as delivered on 17 July 2025, with three still to arrive. Its article also lists the Haneda routes the type was flying then: New York twice daily, Los Angeles, Dallas and London Heathrow once daily, and Paris Charles de Gaulle on alternate days, daily from 27 July to 30 September 2025. That is a snapshot from July 2025, not the current timetable.

On my screen

On 27 September 2026 the screen showed an Airbus A350-1000, JA01WJ, as JAL43, Haneda to Heathrow, at 12,800 feet. Later that afternoon it showed JA10WJ as JAL45, Haneda to Paris Charles de Gaulle, at 39,000 feet.

On 6 October it showed a third, JA03WJ, as JAL43 again, Haneda to Heathrow, at 11,850 feet. The screen prints the route only when one is filed, and all three catches had one, so the flight numbers and routes above come straight from the label.

The photographs with this article are of real Japan Airlines airframes with the registrations named in the credits: JA01WJ at Haneda in 2024, JA03WJ approaching Heathrow in 2025 and JA09WJ at Haneda in 2026. I could not find a freely licensed photograph of JA10WJ, so it appears only as a radar catch.

What I have not confirmed

The tenth delivery rests on one source, Aviation A2Z, so I have hedged it above. I have not found when Japan Airlines started flying the A350-1000 to Heathrow, so I make no claim about that. I have not checked how many of the 13 have been delivered since July 2025, and I have not found an explanation of what the WJ letters stand for.

Sources