Struggling Japan Airlines Corp has entered talks with Air France-KLM over a capital tie-up, a newspaper said yesterday.
Asia’s biggest airline hopes to expand its businesses in Europe via the capital alliance with Air France-KLM, said the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s top-selling daily.
The report cited no sources and officials at the Japanese airline, known as JAL, could not be reached for comment yesterday.
PHOTO: AFP
JAL said on Friday it was considering various tie-ups with a wide variety of potential partners but nothing had been decided.
JAL is in the midst of a major restructuring as the airline incurred its biggest-ever quarterly net loss of ¥99 billion (US$1 billion) in the three months to June.
The Japanese company has forecast a net loss of ¥63 billion for the current fiscal year to March and plans to cut the number of flights and slash costs by ¥53 billion during the current fiscal year and another ¥100 billion in the next fiscal year.
Apart from Air France-KLM, JAL is also seeking a bigger capital injection from Delta Air Lines, the Yomiuri said.
Delta — the world’s biggest airline operator — is considering making a cash infusion of a couple hundred million dollars to aid JAL, a person briefed on the talks said on Friday.
In exchange for the infusion, the person said Delta could get a stake in JAL, an expanded presence in Japan and coveted access to the closest airport to the Tokyo business center.
The Yomiuri reported that Delta could become a top shareholder of JAL.
But the talks between JAL and Delta were in their preliminary stage, and it was unclear what form a partnership between the two airlines might take, said the person, who asked not to be identified by name because of the sensitivity of the discussions.
Delta subsidiary Northwest Airlines has a history with Japan Airlines, having handled flight operations for the Japanese carrier in the early 1950s, JAL’s Web site showed.
A Delta spokesman declined to comment.
JAL spokesman Satoru Tanaka said the airline was considering various tie-ups with a wide variety of potential partners, but nothing had been decided.
Japan’s Nikkei Shimbun quoted a senior JAL official yesterday as saying the tie-up with Delta would be difficult because of the Japanese airline’s alliance with American Airlines.
JAL has a codeshare agreement with American Airlines as part of its participation in the oneworld alliance. Delta’s SkyTeam alliance currently doesn’t have a Japanese partner.
Instead of Delta, JAL may seek a capital injection from American Airlines, the Nikkei said.
Among US carriers, Atlanta-based Delta has a relatively large Japan presence by virtue of its acquisition last year of Northwest, but its market share there is still dwarfed by that of Japanese carriers.
In the Tokyo market, Delta operates from Narita Airport, the main international airport.
Delta has not been allowed to serve Haneda Airport, a mostly domestic airport that is much closer to the center of Tokyo.
The US and Japanese governments have been in talks about air service between the countries, though it is unclear how those talks will turn out.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
RSS