JAL reports operating profit in June quarter and more restructuring updates

Japan Airlines (JAL) announced today that they are seeing great results on their restructuring efforts. JAL has successfully achieved an operating profit in the June quarter, i.e. April-June 2010 (Oh my 6 flights helped them out :P)

According to Sankei Biz, JAL International reports an operating profit of 7.3 billion yen in June and made 8.8 billion yen between April and June. The entire JAL Group reports a 9.2 billion yen profit in June and 16.4 billion yen profit for the June quarter. This is mainly due to all the route suspensions which helps improve flight loads (and not to mention all the ridiculous fare increases! :P)

On the other hand, Dr. Inamori, JAL's CEO, also said there will be a management reshuffle coming this year. But he declined to elaborate. He said this is to help achieve the restructuring goal. Also Inamori will attend the memorial on August 12 on Mt. Osutaka, which marks the 25th anniversary of the JAL123 crash. (Nikkei)

Also, JAL confirmed it has asked its pilots to accept a pay cut (Nikkei). Earlier reports said JAL has asked its pilots to accept a pay reduction of 30%.

JAL has also implement other cost saving measures which comes from its own employees. They have received around 7,000 suggestions including putting a price tag on new items to encourage workers to keep using their old equipments as long as possible, reducing the usage of retrofire system during landing (I hope this is safe LOL), etc. These suggestions have saved JAL lots of money in the past year. For details you can refer to Yomiuri Daily

On the rumor side, JAL will ask creditors to forgive more loans. According to Japan Today the total amount is 521.5 billion yen! (I tend to believe this is true, but as long as I don't see a report saying this is confirmed by ETIC or JAL, I will treat this as a rumor for now)