ANA

ANA Access in China and North Korea: Censorship Methods and Workarounds

What ANA is

All Nippon Airways (ANA) is Japan's largest airline by revenue and the second-largest by fleet size. The carrier was founded in 1952 and is headquartered in Tokyo under the ownership of ANA Holdings Inc. ANA operates domestic and international routes across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America, with a primary user base of business travelers, tourists, and logistics operators booking flights through its website and mobile application.

Why it's censored

ANA access restrictions differ significantly between China and North Korea, reflecting each country's distinct censorship infrastructure and political objectives.

In mainland China, ANA's website and booking platform have been inconsistently accessible since 2015, with documented blocks correlating to periods of heightened oversight by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). The blocking appears content-neutral rather than politically motivated—Chinese regulators have systematized restrictions on foreign airline booking platforms lacking localized servers or compliance with Chinese data residency requirements under the 2017 Cybersecurity Law. ANA's refusal to establish data centers within China or integrate with the state-mandated security protocols has resulted in intermittent DNS filtering and IP blocking by the Great Firewall, particularly affecting the English-language portal.

In North Korea, ANA access is categorical rather than technical. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea prohibits unauthorized foreign internet access entirely through its "Kwangmyong" intranet system, which isolates citizens from the broader internet. Foreign visitors with international connectivity may access ANA through limited channels, but North Korean residents encounter complete blockage as part of the regime's information control apparatus rather than targeting ANA specifically.

Technical blocking methods

China employs multiple overlapping blocking techniques against ANA:

DNS filtering is the primary layer—queries for ana.co.jp and regional subdomains are redirected or dropped by state-controlled DNS resolvers. IP-level blocking supplements DNS filtering; the carrier's primary booking server IPs are listed in the Great Firewall's block tables and fail to route packets originating from mainland ASNs. SNI (Server Name Indication) filtering has also been documented, where TLS handshakes containing ANA's domain names trigger connection resets.

Deep packet inspection (DPI) is employed during periods of elevated censorship intensity, particularly around sensitive political dates, to identify and throttle ANA-bound traffic even when DNS or IP blocks are circumvented.

North Korea's blocking is architectural rather than technique-specific; the country's internet gateway (operated by the Korea Kommecon Joint Venture and China Unicom) simply does not route traffic to foreign airline booking systems, with ANA among thousands of blocked foreign domains.

User workarounds

Users in China attempting ANA access typically employ circumvention tools that mask DNS queries, route traffic through external resolvers, or create encrypted tunnels that prevent DPI inspection. These methods are persistent but unreliable due to ongoing technical refinements by blocking authorities.

Alternative routing through proxy services, mirror sites, or calling ANA's Tokyo office directly remains viable but introduces delays and operational friction.

Users in North Korea face insurmountable technical barriers; circumvention requires physical access to international connectivity, limiting practical solutions.

Alternatives

Japan Airlines (JAL) faces similar but less consistent blocking in mainland China under comparable regulatory pressures. Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific, both headquartered outside China, experience intermittent restrictions but maintain better accessibility through regional server deployments.

Outlook

China's censorship of ANA is unlikely to ease. The CAC's enforcement of data localization requirements is accelerating, and foreign airlines face mounting pressure to establish compliant infrastructure or accept degraded market access. North Korea's restrictions remain permanent under current governance structures.

The trend across both jurisdictions is toward tightening, not relaxation.