Japanese Air Force Made 29% More Scramble Flights; 2.5 Times More for Chinese Aircraft in 2010

from Nihon Keizai Shimbun, April 28, 2011

Defense Ministry’s Joint Staff Council (JSC) released the number of scrambling by Japan Air Self Defense Force (JADSF) during fiscal 2010, April 2010-March 2011. The number for Chinese aircraft showed 2.5 times increase from the previous year by a total of 96 missions. Scrambling for Russian aircraft accounted for 68％ as the largest with 264 sorties or 34% increase. The statistics show the two countries were intensified for their intelligence and information gathering missions to Japan.
The total number of scrambling was 368 times in fiscal 2010, a 29% increase but there was no case of incursion to the Japanese airspace, according to JSC. A peak of the number of scrambling was recorded in 1984, in the midst of cold war, with 944 sorties, then it went down as low as 331 times in fiscal 1992.

The Russians carried out long distance flight along with the Japanese airspace from the Sea of Japan to the Pacific Ocean while the Chinese approached closer to the Senkaku Islands that Japan claims as its territory.

Since March 11 earthquake, JASDF still flew its interceptors to the approaching aircraft of the two countries: 14 sorties to the Russians and 4 times for the Chinese respectively.

Photo Ministry of Defense

JAL Reborn In More Troubled Sky

March 29,2011

Japan Airline's corporate rehabilitation process has come to complete on March 28 as it was decided by the Tokyo District Court. JAL got additional loan of about 255 billion yen (about $3 billion) from banks, that was used to repay its carryover debt of about 395 billion yen with its own cash. However, Japanese air traffic would be in a hard time after March 11 earthquake/tsunami and the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and its path to growth again is not secured.

JAL had filed an application for the corporate rehabilitation process on January 19,2010; it had over 1 trillion yen debt     back then and literally bankrupt.  Its major transaction banks abandoned their loan armouring 520 billion yen. JAL completed a tough restructuring plan such as slashing off 16,000 employees as a whole group level, dropping unprofitable air routes and capacity cutting that had approval of the court in November 2010.

The global economic recovery worked positively for JAL to earn 175 billion yen operating profit in 11 months from April  2010 until February 2011. This better performance resulted in additional loans from the banks.

However, the post quake traffic is decreasing overall and Ken Onishi, President of JAL, revealed its domestic demand is 28% off while international demand is 25% down.
　
Kazuo Inamori, Chairman, is confident to run JAL better now by seeing profitability by air route, though he expects lowering of the corporate performance is unavoidable.