Japan Airlines vs. ANA: Who's On Top?

Hello and welcome to the airline Weekly Large.

I'm your host Gordon Smith and I'm joined as usual by J. Shabbat.

In this week's show, we're heading for Japan with the latest insights from the country's

two mega carriers.

Hi, J. How's it going?

Okay, Gordon, how are you?

Doing really well.

We are heading eastward to Japan this week, but we've also got something else happening

in the Asia Pacific region as we're recording here on the 3rd of February and that's the

Singapore Air Show and sort of bolted on to that.

There is the Changi Aviation Summit and Willie Walsh, who I know is familiar name to many

people listening to this podcast.

He joined us at the Skift Aviation Forum in Dallas in 2024, as my memory recalls.

I should know that.

I interviewed him on stage.

He was speaking in Singapore and we had some highlights from his address to the room

J. He's obviously representing an airline trade body here.

He does have a very clear agenda.

He knows who butters his bread.

What did we learn if anything from Willie Walsh's comments?

Well, we learned that last year 2025 was a good year for the global airline industry.

And as you said, he does have a job to do and one of those jobs is ensuring that the

governments of the world, the regulators of the world, don't think the airline industry

is doing too well, less they think it's a good candidate to tax even more than it

already is or regulate even more than it already is.

So part of his job is like, oh, our situation is horrible.

You got to help us out.

But he also acknowledges that in terms of demand, it really was another good year.

You could say that the third consecutive strong demand year post pandemic coming out of

the COVID shock.

And the numbers looked really good.

I mean, in terms of just demand measured by traffic, this is measured by RPK, so they

that's revenue passenger kilometers.

They're also incorporating distance into this measurement here, but passenger traffic

by RPK is grew 5% in 2025 versus 2024.

So that's pretty good.

You know, for an economy that's probably growing less than that, that's, you know, count

that as a win.

And if you look at just international traffic, that was up 7%.

So domestic up 2.5 international up 7.

So that is a very, very robust growth.

So yeah, it's really no disputing the fact that demand is growing.

Now another major point that Mr. Walsh emphasized was that the supply chain disruptions that

have been prevalent coming out of COVID remained very much a problem.

And I had his own economists did basically, you know, some estimates about what those supply

chain difficulties were costing or are costing the airline industry.

And obviously that's going to be very rough estimate.

It's, you know, you can't really put a very precise number on this.

But Ayada says that $11 billion was what it cost the industry last year.

And they said about 2 thirds of that figure was because of the additional fuel and additional

maintenance that the industry is paying because it's using older aircraft.

If it wasn't for these supply chain disruptions, you'd have a lot more of the newer generation,

more fuel efficient jets flying around.

And so as a result of having to fly some of the older technology, you're incurring additional

cost.

So again, take that number with a grain of salt, salt, there definitely is a cost associated,

that meaningful cost associated with the supply chain disruptions.

Of course, he didn't say this, but I think it's pretty universally acknowledged that the

supply chain disruptions also helped the industry on the revenue side too.

Absolutely.

Airplanes, yeah.

If airlines can't get airplanes on time, then yeah, some of that capacity is going to be

backfilled by keeping older planes in service longer than they would have been.

Some of them, you know, sometimes you've got least additional aircraft.

But in general, there are fewer airplanes or fewer seats flying than would be the case

where they're not these supply chain disruptions.

So that's going to push up your yields and your unit revenues too.

So where does it wash out in the end?

Hard to say.

Willie Walsh out.

Willie Walsh out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Willie Walsh out.

There you go.

I like that.

But yeah, I'm never never sure, but I think, you know, my sense is that all things being

equal.

The airlines would rather have their new planes, but I do think it's probably a net positive

if you think about what it's done on the revenue side versus what it's done on the

cost side.

But that's more of a hunch than anything else on my part.

Now, I broadly agree with you, Jay.

And as you said, Willie Walsh and Singapore, he said around two thirds of that 11 billion

figure coming from additional fuel costs and maintenance costs as the industry is operating

a fleet that is on average two years older than the long-term average because of the delays

in the delivery of new aircraft while shedding regrettably, and then you can obviously

discuss whether it is a true regret or not, we see the disruption continuing for some

time to come.

And also, sort of, this is the classic I add to playbook, you hear it time and time again

at the AGM and also whenever they get their analysts and their executives out on tour,

Jay, they like to bring the net profit per passenger down to very sort of rational terms.

It's quite often described as being the same price as a cup of coffee in Geneva, where

Ayatah has its big base.

And Walsh said in Singapore in just putting it in context, the best year of the airline

industry in sort of recent history, at least, was in terms of profitability 2015, when

we delivered an operating margin of 8.3% and a net margin of 5.0%, net profit per passenger

in 2025 and in 2026 is quote, amiga, 7.9 USD per passenger.

Now there's no doubting the margins are thin and there's not much margin for error there.

The big question that maybe some of our newer listeners might be asking is, is this a structural

failure of the airline business model, or is it just a reflection of a high volume

business?

Yes, you're only earning on average 8 bucks per passenger, but if you've got a heck of

a lot of passengers coming through, it sure adds up.

What it is, it's a reflection of a business that's very, very, very heavily capital intensive,

it's very, very heavy, labor intensive.

It's also extremely, extremely competitive and it's extremely, extremely regulated.

So you combine all those factors and you could sort of see why the airline business

is a chronically low margin sector.

You have certain regions of the world.

The US market, for example, during the 2010s was a little bit above that.

You mentioned out 2015 was a record year, Willie Walsh mentioned that as record year,

for the global airline industry with, what was it, Gordon, just say 8%, so we're Walsh

said, for 8.3 operating margin, that margin of five, okay, 8.3 operating, I'd remember

2015 was the year that fuel price is absolutely tanked, so that was, you know, that pretty much

explains that right there.

So you know, that said during the, during let's say the latter half of the 2010s, US

airlines earned more than 8%, a lot of them did on average anyway, so they're at regional

differences.

It is a very structural, structurally low margin industry.

I mean, you can compare that to, you know, the Silicon Valley tech sector and, you know,

Microsoft will come out with 40% margins and, you know, it's, it's a very, very different

or even, you know, the railroad industry in North America, you know, 40% margins.

So 8, 40, you can see, there's a big difference.

And, you know, one thing that Ayada has, has long tried to do is recapture some of the

value for, that the industry generates that is currently captured by airline suppliers.

So if you think about the money when the margins that are going to the aircraft manufacturers,

the aircraft distributor, or sorry, the airline ticket distributors, the, you know, software

companies, the, you know, engine makers, you can go on, Ayada has, you know, tried to

sort of recapture some of that, but it's a competitive industry.

There's only, you know, so much you can accomplish in that respect.

I remember too, that a lot of the suppliers are in duopolistic, triophilistic, triophilistic

situations.

I mean, Airbus and Boeing is the best example, hard to really drive, too hard of a bargain.

With, you know, your aircraft, on your aircraft, when there's only really two major providers.

So, whereas, you know, airlines in the US alone, there's, you know, 10 of them are

wherever, however many major ones there are now.

So yeah, it is, it's just structurally very difficult industry.

Speaking of two major providers, Jay, beautiful segue to Japan, because we go A&A and Japan

airlines, and we've got some A&A holdings, and obviously Japan Airlines has got various

figures and different pilots as well, Zip Air Tokyo and others, an exciting market, a dynamic

market, not without its challenges.

Let's take a look at these latest numbers from these two very large operators, Jay, because

like I said, we're recording here, 3rd of February, we've had some fresh numbers out of

both of them.

Where do you want to begin, Japan or A&A?

Well, what I'll begin with is a look at their operating margins, we'll compare, we'll compare

both of them.

Sounds like a plan.

Yep, we'll look at the calendar 4th quarter first, and then we'll go to the annual.

So everybody be ready.

I'm going to read off a lot of numbers here, but I'll try to be slow and try to put them

in context.

So first, we'll start with, this is for the October to December period.

So these are, we talked about last week, remember when Ryan Air, you and I talked about them,

we said they were on a different fiscal versus calendar year count year.

It's not, again, to caught up when these airlines are, how these airlines treat their year

in terms of their accounting, but just looking at the January to December calendar year now.

So in terms of that last quarter of the year, October to December, Japan Airlines just

beat on the pond by one point.

So 13% versus 12% for A&A.

So gel 13, A&A 12, very, very good numbers.

Both of those numbers in, for both of those airlines, were up year over year.

And both were actually up by a couple points versus 2019 as well.

So these are two airlines that are actually performing better now, at least this is, you

know, for the quarter better now than they were pre pandemic, which is, you know, a, that's

an important statement to make because a lot of, that's not true for a lot of airlines.

We've talked many times as podcasts about how since the pandemic, there's been a ton

of cost inflation, ton of, you know, additional competition and other factors that have pressured

airline margins now versus then, but in this case, these guys are doing better now versus

then.

Full year, a little bit of a different story, but a lot of similarities.

So for the full year, Japan Airlines, again, was the winner, 9.2% was their operating margin

for the full year.

And all the pond was 8.4%.

So again, these are, you know, we're talking about, they're pretty, pretty close to each

other.

And I'll mention a few reasons why there might be a little bit of a disparity, but why

one is, why gel is doing a little bit better.

9.2 versus 8.4.

Again, both of these numbers were better on a year-of-year basis.

And the, in, on the pond's case, the annual number was better than in 2019.

In Gel's case, there's a little bit worse, but pretty much right, right there.

So that's a, you know, give you a, let's, we'll start with that.

Give you a broad picture.

Make sure.

Yep.

I mentioned a couple of airlines at the very start, Zipair, Peach, Japan, these are all

subsidiaries.

Just to be really clear, there's early juncture in our conversation, when we are discussing

gel and ANA, is it the groups, including some of these divisions and subsidiaries, or

is this just the mainline operation that we're looking at?

Yeah.

Thanks for that question.

It's a good, good one to clarify.

So in this case, yes, in both of these cases, we're talking about the groups.

So you mentioned some of the subsidiary airlines that are included in those groups.

These are airline groups that also have substantial cargo businesses.

For example, Japan Airlines, about 10% of their total revenue is cargo.

They also have the mileage businesses, maintenance businesses, ground handling business, ANA

even has a drone business.

So, yeah, this is a group, a group by numbers.

The passenger business, think of them very roughly, you know, something like three-quarters

of their total revenue, maybe it's close to 80%, is the airline itself, the airlines

themselves, including in the LCCs.

But even, you know, and also remember that the LCCs here, you mentioned Peach, you mentioned

Zippair, these are pretty small at this point, revenue-wise.

So the big chunk of revenues here that we're talking about are still, you know, the core

international passenger business, domestic passenger business.

And it's a good question because if you recall, when we talked about Korean Air in the

past, Korean Air is still not their numbers that they're putting out, still don't incorporate

Asian, which they just bought.

So that's an important thing to recognize when you're looking at their numbers.

But yeah, good question Gordon, Jalan ANA, it's all in.

It's all in, all in.

Let's take a look just before the break, Jay.

Give us one of the key themes that stood off for you when you were looking at the numbers

are the JAL or ANA, or both of them that you think our listeners should know about, that

influenced these figures.

Yeah, I'm going to give you some, some demand themes here that largely was true for both

airlines.

So one is that the international inbound demand continues to be really strong, and that's

been another one of these themes that has been true really since, you know, coming out

of the pandemic, 23, 23, 24, 25, and a lot of that is tourism.

Some business, but a lot of this tourism, Japan still continues to track a lot of international

tourists.

A bigger reason for that is the cheap yen or the foreign exchange rate, which continues

to depreciate.

And other reasons too, I mean, the government has put in a big effort to try to promote

tourism as well, broad, so that's helped too.

So that aspect, very, very strong, outbound business demand from Japan, so if you think

in Japan as it is the fourth or fifth biggest economy in the world, a lot of huge international

companies, Toyota being the biggest company in Japan by your revenues, the, both of these

airlines said that outbound international demand was actually stronger than expected

last quarter.

So that's been going pretty well.

And then even domestic, domestic is, these are, Japan is a very, very large domestic market.

It has been shrinking over time.

Some of that is due to just Japan as a shrinking population.

Some of that has to do with, there's a number here, yeah.

So on the pond said that business travel in volume terms, not revenue terms, business

travel domestically is down 20 to 30% from pre-COVID levels.

So you can see there is that kind of structural contraction of the domestic market.

Now at the same time, you still have a lot of those foreigners that, that I mentioned

that are coming to visit Japan, a lot of them are flying around domestically when they

get to Japan.

So you know, they might fly in from, you know, Paris to Tokyo, but then they'll spend a

few days in Tokyo and then maybe get a flight up to Sapporo or, you know, the Osaka

or whatever.

So there's, there's not a hard, a hard line between international and domestic.

There's some, some overlap there to some, some, you know, intermingling there.

So all that being said, yeah, the domestic market is, is pretty healthy shrinking but, but

healthy.

All right.

And yeah, you can see that in the yields too.

And I'll stop.

There is a few, be sure everybody to, you know, I always kind of, kind of stayed as every,

but would like everybody to, you know, make sure to catch the upcoming feature story because

we'll have a lot.

There are other aspects of demand that are interesting to just some interesting trends

that, that, that need to be highlighted that will skip for now, but we'll talk more

about in the airline weekly issue.

For sure, yeah, day for your diary, February the 9th for the next airline weekly issue.

If you're not already subscribing, go to airlineweekly.com for a slash subscribe and you get

a free trial issue and take a look and see if you like it.

And then hopefully subscribe.

That's the idea, Jay.

We're going to have a bit more detail of things Japan in part two before that is to quit

reminded sending the questions or comments that you might have for us to podcasts at

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Don't go anywhere.

We'll be right back.

Hello, and welcome back to the airline weekly lounge on Gordon Smith, and I'm joined

as usual by co-host Jay Shabbat.

We are discussing Japan.

Jay's for the break was discussing some of the some of the larger themes.

These have been around for several years in a few cases, but also some of the newer trends

as well.

Jay, like we said before the break, we've got a lot more detail in the feature issue

in airline weekly.

So we don't want to go into it in great detail, but there are also just a few other areas

where I want to pick out in terms of the differences between A and A and J.

Now, fleet is one of them, and I was running last year about A and A's shopping spree.

You know, we have a skift take, which some of our readers might have seen as an airline

weekly subscriber.

You get access to the airline news on skift.com.

And my skift take here from February 2025.

So exactly a year ago was A and A's $14 billion aircraft deal.

I said, five models, three manufacturers, Japan's A and A buys a bit of everything.

And in my skift take, I said, it's a fascinating aircraft assortment worthy of an on the Cassie

tasting menu, because they bought stuff from stuff, I know it's very technical term,

from Embraer, from Airbus, and from Boeing, obviously, A and A sort of in aviation circles

notable for having those wacky flying hornu A380s that they tend to send between mainland

Japan and Hawaii.

They also have some other broader differences with Zhao, Jay, with only indication as to in

these latest numbers around fleets, around perspectives there, around direction between

these two carriers.

Am I allowed to talk about network?

Of course you can.

Yeah.

Okay.

I gave you the fleet and I'm going to do network.

So there are some differences in the networks that both of these carriers fly.

And to a certain extent, it explains some of the variants in their financial performance

over the years.

One thing to note for start, we'll start out by saying that all in the pond is does

have heavier exposure to the Japanese domestic market, which over the past couple of years

I said it's, you know, that had a pretty good quarter yields arising.

It's not a bad market by any means, but I think the real, the real buzz, the real strength

has come from the international market, particularly the long haul international market.

And Zhao has more exposure to that.

So that has that benefited, you know, Zhao a lot, even before the pandemic, Zhao, interesting

and I've talked about this many times in the past, but worth mentioning again, that Japan

has always had a lot more or sorry, Japan airlines has always had a lot more exposure to

Hawaii than on the pond.

And Hawaii, I think that was kind of their secret sauce, one of their secret sauces for

Japan airlines, what explains Japan Airlines doing so well during the 2010s and consistently

outperforming ANA during the 2010s, you know, there's different reasons.

One is that they went through bankruptcy restructuring and got their cost down the early part

of the decade.

They're, you can analyze this to death and go into, you know, the top 100 reasons or whatever,

but we'll stick to one right now, one very important one and that being Hawaii, Hawaii

really was just a superstar market during the 2010s.

We know that from how well Hawaiian Airlines did, they were a Japan Airlines partner.

That coming out of the pandemic was much weaker and I don't want to say that's solely responsible

for this.

But if you look at a trajectory of operating margins for both of these airlines over the

past couple of years, all in the pond actually, even though 2017, 2018, 2019, they underperformed

gel on the pond in 2023, so that's your first year, you know, full year of recovery

coming out of the pandemic.

They actually, for the first time in many, many years, actually did better than gel.

They repeated that feat in 2024.

I think a lot of that was the fact that Hawaii was really bad.

2025, as I mentioned before, flipped again, gel outperforms ANA could be to a certain extent,

somewhat attributable to Hawaii recovering.

If you look at last quarter's load factor numbers, you know, RPK demand increase numbers,

they give some of that.

They don't provide a ton of insight or color behind exactly how Hawaii is doing, but it's

seemed like that market is doing much better than it was with the past, you know, a couple

years coming out of COVID.

So that is a big tailwind for Japan airlines, I think, as best as, you know, I can tell

from limited transparency here.

The other kind of thing that's important to know about gel is they are more exposed, not

extremely more exposed, but as a percentage of their total, you know, seek capacity, they

are more exposed to the continental North American market as well.

So that's, you know, North American minus Hawaii minus Squam.

That market has done very, very well coming out of the pandemic last couple of years,

continues to do very, very well premium in particular in that market, very, very well.

So I think if you're looking for another reason of why Japan airlines is now, once again, outperforming

ANA, even if just by a little bit, but that North American market is, is, I think, a good

place to look at a pretty nice joint venture as well with, I think it's the trend

joint Siberian venture.

I think joint trans Siberian venture don't quenching on that.

I think I'm muddling up.

You love the railways as well, Jay, the railroads, I think I'm mixing up the trans Siberian railway

with the Finair, Iberia, British Airways, Japan Airlines, JSV, joint Siberian venture,

I think, is it?

Yeah, the trans Siberian joint venture, exactly.

There we go.

Yeah.

So that's Japan, well, by whatever name that, that's exactly Japan Airlines has that joint

revenue sharing of its IAG, British Airways Finair, I'm sorry, British Airways Iberia,

and then Finair is in that as well.

And then they, of course, also go into North America, have a close joint venture with American

airlines, which explains why they fly to Dallas for it worth as one example.

And then, you know, ANA has their own joint ventures too.

They have quite a few there, you know, close with United in North America and they're close

to Latons in Europe.

They have some Asian partners as well, like Singapore Airlines.

So joint ventures differently, but not quite sort of Korean air and delta levels of integrity

integration, I should say, as opposed to integrity, and just sheer bullishness in terms

of we are making inshion an absolute mega hub and we will do everything we can to fend

anyone off.

Yeah, right.

And Delta, you know, Delta is they were because you'd even going back pre-North West Delta

merger in 2008, you know, Northwest and KLM pioneered this whole idea of a joint venture.

And they have always just been believed very strongly in very deep integration.

So you'll have some of those Delta joint ventures, like with our friends KLM, Virgin, LA and

a Korean air, but they're actually not only sharing revenues, but they're sharing costs

as well.

So it's really, really deep integration.

Now, if you're looking at just the Asian joint ventures and trying to compare, you know,

Japan, Korea, remember, then when you're with when you're Delta and you're cooperating

with Korean air, you're really only dealing with one airport in Seoul.

I mean, Seoul does have a domestic, you know, oriented airport, but Seoul in China airport

is pretty much the name of the game for for international long haul, whereas if you're

Japan, it gets a little bit trickier to kind of run a joint venture because you have some

of your stuff going into Nareeta airport, some of your stuff going into Haneda airport.

And so, you know, it's not, you don't have all your chickens in one coop or whatever

that is.

I'm sure that some Japanese metaphor we could use as well.

Yeah.

Well, we'll, we'll let someone else come up with the metaphor, but I don't know where I

got that chickens in the, I don't know, but anyway, X and one basket, X, that's probably

a thought chicken's eggs.

Yeah.

Okay.

Eggs in one basket.

Oh, chickens in one coop.

That works.

Yeah.

And we are rewriting the English language even in 2026.

And also the other thing to know about the Tokyo airports is that Nareeta airport will

be adding another runway 2029, I think is the expected opening and I believe another terminal

and they're actually extending one of the existing runways.

So if you look at on the pond, again, just using them as an example here, they came out

recently with a new kind of updated business plan, you can say.

And they plan, you can see that they plan on tremendous growth from Nareeta airport.

Remember Nareeta is the one that's kind of less preferred among business travelers because

it's a little further away from the city center.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Tell us.

I don't know.

And as I have very recent experience flew through Tokyo in October last year in order to get

to a work event.

And it had been a while since I've flown through Anita.

And I spent a couple of days in Tokyo and then heading down to Anita.

And it was on real, even in sort of 10am, 1030, so it wasn't peak peak morning rush hour,

but nonetheless, you know, still busy enough to be 25 minutes from my central Tokyo hotel

to the terminal door.

And that wasn't a cab as well.

So I quite a lot of luggage.

I was eating a mess around with the train just based on my individual circumstances on

that very morning.

But the same journey from my hotel to Nareeta would have been well over an hour.

And obviously you can, you know, you can choose your district in Tokyo in the same way that,

you know, if you're in South London, Gatwick Airport is actually very convenient.

If you're on the railway line, if you're in North London, actually, you can get to

Stanford relatively quickly.

So it's not always a case of Anita is best, but you're absolutely right, Jay.

If you were speaking general terms, Anita is by far the closest to the vast majority

of the of the attractions in the in the go to Tokyo area.

Right.

And so you keep that in mind when I tell you that all in the pond, plans on growing at

Haneda, just 12% between 2025.

This is using last year as a base year 2025 and 2030, so that's 12% at Haneda.

And then 66% is their growth clan at Nareeta.

So they're going to be growing at the one that's sort of less preferred, so they could put

some pressure on yields.

And I, and this is the Japan Airlines, as far as I know, hasn't actually come out, you

know, hasn't publicized the same forecast or the same, you know, this kind of plan.

But I imagine that with the new airport capacity, Nareeta, it's going to be similar.

So there could be some, you know, some pressure on yields.

So, you know, just, just one thing to keep in mind.

We haven't talked about, I mean, there's a lot that we haven't talked about, but I guess

we should, because it is topical, and it is, you know, meaningful for earnings right

now for these carriers.

There is a dispute between Japan and China that's resulted in some demand deterioration,

particularly going from China into Japan.

All in the pond also gave some little bit of detail on that.

They said the, you know, the figures were, were negative in December.

That was probably the worst of it, but they have seen some pickup in January.

Now, both of these Japanese carriers have reduced their capacity to China quite a bit.

So you don't see, I was looking through some of the load factor numbers.

I didn't really see any, you know, any meaningful deterioration there in terms of, in fact,

if you look at, the Japan China market is a very low load factor market anyway.

It's always, you know, it's going to be a lot lower loads on average than, say, you

know, Japan to U.S., or Japan to, you know, Korea, whatever, but I didn't see any, you

know, in fact, I saw that they're actually an increase in load factors every year.

So you're more seeing it on the yields, you know, what people are willing to pay, and

the volumes too.

I mean, like I said, the both carriers car capacity a lot too.

You know, lower volumes, less capacity, but the loads are holding.

Interesting, Jay.

So they're one of the analysts that I was speaking to who's privy to that part of the world

in some of the numbers.

He was suggesting that the Chinese group trips, which were a huge part of that, they tend

to prefer to fly on Chinese metal.

So a Chinese airline flying outbound from China to Japan.

So that may be another factor as to why we're not seeing the dispute, as you mentioned,

as you mentioned.

The Chinese carriers may be feeling it more because the lower yield group traffic is going

to be on the Chinese carriers more or not.

Interestingly enough, I should mention that Japan Airlines does have a partially owned

subsidiary called Spring Airlines Japan.

And Spring Airlines is a Chinese airline.

So it's a Chinese brand.

They're Spring Airlines based in Shanghai.

They're owned by a big Chinese travel agency.

So you can see how Japan Airlines by buying into that is sort of playing into what you're

talking about.

That's a preference there.

So got it.

And that brings me nearly onto my final point, Jay, the news today that Qantas is preparing

to sell.

It's full holding in Jetstar Japan.

Well, I'm going to go into this in full detail, much more color on this in the next issue

of airline weekly.

But non-binding deal announced Tuesday, as we're recording here, Qantas-intensity divest.

It's one third stake in Jetstar Japan.

It's not going to affect Jetstar mainliners.

Obviously, well, nine months after Qantas pulled out of Jetstar Asia, that was at Singapore,

based brand, but all the mood music coming out of Qantas today saying, yep, we're pulling

out subject to regulatory approval, but it's really going to fund capital investments

on its core Australian brands, both Qantas and Jetstar out of there.

Who is going to be taking that sort of former Qantas share?

I hear you ask, well, it's going to be the development bank of Japan set to enter the

ownership structure alongside financial group Tokyo Century and, of course, Japan Airlines

will remain as its largest shareholder, much more detail and analysis in the next issue

of airline weekly.

Anything to add, Jay, before we wrap up?

No, I think we covered Japan pretty exhaustively there.

I shouldn't say exhaustively.

There's a lot more in the issue coming up, but you can never exhaust all the information

on these exciting subjects, but yeah, we covered a lot, and that's all I've got.

That sounds good.

All right.

A quick reminder that as an airline weekly, subscribe to get access to all the airline

news on skiff.com, plus skip to research as airline reports, go to airlineweekly.com.

But in the meantime, thanks to Jay for joining me and giving me that Japanese analysis,

and also that's from running commentary on the latest comments from Willie Walsh.

Thanks to our producers, Jean, Monica and Will, and thanks to you wherever you are in

the world.

Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time.

Bye for now.

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