Japan Press Weekly

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2011 October 26 - November 1 [LABOR]

Save 1 trillion yen before talking about safety: JAL

A trustee overseeing Japan Airline’s rehabilitation in his lecture to JAL employees said, “You should now press about safety issues after you helped the company accumulate one trillion yen in internal reserves.”

This was revealed by Japanese Communist Party representative Kokuta Keiji at a House of Representatives land and transport committee meeting on October 26.

Kokuta said, “JAL Chair Inamori’s management philosophy prioritizing profits over safety has caused same adverse effects in flight operations,” and cite the following cases:

JAL pilots are forced to fly across typhoons and have passengers accept the shaking associated with the turbulence because bypassing the typhoon’s path would add an additional 200,000 yen in fuel costs; and they sometimes delay turning on the seat-belt sign when needed in order to increase in-flight sales of products.

Kokuta urged the government to instruct JAL to put more importance on safety. Land and Transport Minister Maeda Takeshi responded, “I will give the proper instruction to JAL.”