Cheap flights to Japan force a JAL course change

New strategy: New JAL group employees release paper airplanes in front of a Boeing Co. 777 aircraft during an initiation ceremony in Tokyo. The airlline is hoping to establish a new low-cost carrier and boost international traffic. — Bloomberg

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.