, Columnist
Cheap Flights to Japan Force a JAL Course Change
Another low-fare operator may simply cannibalize profitable full-service routes.
Domestic aviation isn’t quite the wasteland you’d think given the shinkansen.
Photographer: Flightlevel80/Getty Images
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Japan Airlines Co. has spent the best part of a decade recovering from its 2010 bankruptcy.
The collapse — Japan’s largest outside the financial sector — turned its one-time flag-carrier into a distant follower of ANA Holdings Inc. Worse than that, it put JAL on the back foot at a time of dramatic change in the country’s aviation industry, with the deregulation of low-cost airlines and a fivefold surge in inbound tourists rewriting the rules of the game.