NH stands for Nippon Helicopter.
On December 27, 1952 — just months after the Allied occupation of Japan ended — a company called Japan Helicopter and Aeroplane Transports was born with two Bell 47D-1 helicopters and 28 employees. Twelve of them were board members. One of those original Bell 47D-1s still sits on display at ANA's Safety Education Center near Haneda Airport.
Its first logo? Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's aerial screw — the 15th-century sketch of a spiral rotor that many consider the conceptual ancestor of the helicopter. A Renaissance dream, printed on the tail of a postwar startup.
By December 1953, a tiny de Havilland Dove flew cargo from Osaka to Tokyo. It was the first scheduled flight by a Japanese pilot in postwar Japan.
A nation was reclaiming its sky.
The company merged with rival Far East Airlines in 1958, rebranded as All Nippon Airways, and grew into Japan's largest private carrier. But the NH code stayed — a fossil embedded in every booking, a quiet nod to where it all began.
Then came the bet that changed everything.
On April 26, 2004, ANA placed a firm order for 50 Boeing 787 Dreamliners — becoming the launch customer before a single prototype existed. This wasn't blind faith. Japanese heavy industry — Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, Fuji (now Subaru) — would build 35% of the airframe, including the composite wings. It was the first time a foreign firm had ever built wings for a Boeing jetliner.
ANA's executives called it an aircraft "Made with Japan." They meant it literally.
ANA received the world's first Dreamliner on September 26, 2011. Today it operates 88 — the largest 787 fleet on earth.
And the quiet stat that seals it: zero fatal passenger accidents in over five decades of continuous operation.
From two Bell helicopters to eighty-eight Dreamliners — and a da Vinci sketch still hiding in the DNA. That's not an airline. That's a nation learning to fly again.