Cheap Flights to Japan Force a JAL Course Change

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. Freed from post-bankruptcy investment restrictions last year, JAL looks determined to make up for lost time.