Japan Airlines is currently conducting a trial to see how much fuel they can save by closing windows on the sunny side of the plane. This can help reduce the inflight temperature and therefore reducing the A/C power. 

Japan Airlines is planning to suspend its 7 weekly Chubu-Paris flights in October as part of its cost reduction restructure. The flight load was around 60% during April-June which is a sharp drop from before. JAL's flight to Paris is the ONLY flight operated by Japanese carrier from Chubu to Europe. That's why the airport officials are trying to persuade JAL to change its mind. They were hoping JAL would consider having a frequency reduction instead of route suspension.

Source: The Japan Times

Japan Airlines flight 011 has to cancel takeoff AGAIN today due to the SAME engine problem experienced yesterday. JAL has to cancel the flight and they are going to fly another plane to Mexico City so passengers can continue their journey tomorrow. This is kind of unusual for JAL but this is better than finding the problem while they are across the Pacific :)

Source: The Straits Times

Japan Airlines Hong Kong has posted details of its "triple" bonus award program for online booking which I posted last week. Interestingly they now realize there are actually 4 bonus awards instead of 3 and therefore renaming the program "Web Summer Campaign '09 4 Exclusive Awards!!". They forgot to count the 500 bonus miles when you book online last time. Something they didn't mention last time was not every booking class qualify for this campaign. Only tickets booked in F/J/D/Y/B/H/M/N qualifies. For details, you can refer to JAL Hong Kong website.

Japan Airlines flight 011 on July 8 2009 from Mexico City o Vancouver, BC has to reject takeoff after engine problem. One of the four engines of the 744 did not reach takeoff thrust and the pilot has to return to the gate. According to JAL US website, the flight has to push back for 24 hours and so is the following flight from Vancouver to Narita.

Source: JAL America and Aviation Herald

Japan Airlines Hong Kong has uploaded pictures of its July meals. I am not impressed by the Business class offering at all. Not sure what I am going to pick on my HKG-NRT flight :( You can check out he meal options on JAL Hong Kong website.

Japan Airlines has won the Yahoo! Hong Kong Emotive Brand Award 2008-2009, Airline category! No idea what this award is but any award is good :)

PS: This is my 100th post :)

Source: JAL Hong Kong

According to Nikkei English News, Japan Airlines plans to suspend more KIX international flights. The two routes affected are Dalian and Hangzhou, both belongs to JAL China network. ANA also plans some domestic route suspension and frequency reduction from KIX. This definitely doesn't look good for KIX who has been losing quite a number of international flights (I believe it lost its long-haul flight when JAL cut its KIX-LHR flight).

Source: Bloomberg

I recently took a Japan Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo (JL061). And I finally remembered to take pictures before I eat my food on my LAX-NRT flight. Here's my photo report of my flight.

Japan Airlines flight 005 from New York to Narita blew on of the tires during landing on July 2 2009.

I am sitting at the LAX International Lounge now. Behind the Japan Airlines check-in counters, JAL is playing a LAX route 50th anniversary screensaver. It shows the planes they used in the old days to fly this route. This is actually pretty nice and keep me looking at the video for um....a minute while waiting for check in. It looks like they have much less counters now after they moved to the new area (old one is under renovation) and for some weird reasons the Economy line is shorter and the Executive class checked in agent looked at the Economy line to ask the next passenger to go to her counter while I am standing at the Executive line waiting. Weird...But she finally noticed me standing there waiting and she is very nice and provide a GREAT check in experience. So it makes up for the mistakes she made :P But seriously LAX is a mess. When can I just check in my bag and be done with it? As Black Adder suggests, we need a new airport LOL

Japan Airlines has started a customer service to assistant passengers in Japan to make a reservation online and to do web check-in. With this new service, the JAL customer service agent will be able to take control on your computer and show you step by step on how to perform these two functions for both domestic and international flights. You will see a big yellow/orange arrow showing you what the JAL agent is doing. For details of this service and screenshots with big arrow, you can visit JAL Japan website (Japanese only, in case you don't read Japanese, just click the banner at the bottom of the page and choose the third tab to see screenshots)

Update: maybe it's called Sky Navigation...that's probably the same Japanese only service referred on this page.

Japan Airlines has uploaded volume 19 of their Today's Topic. Today's Topic is the video you see during JAL flight which explain stuff like how JAL operation center works, why do they put a mirror in front of those customer service agent (so they can see their smile because JAL thinks customers can feel your mood by listening to your voice). Volume 19 is about the next generation jet fuel. If you haven't heard about it yet, JAL performed Asia's first 2nd generation biofuel test flight a few months ago and it was a success. They still don't have the English subtitle in the video yet. So you will have to watch the Japanese version for now. You can watch the video here

I am taking my summer vacation and therefore there will be less regular updates until I return from my trip next month. I am pretty sure there will be plenty to write about since all of my flights are on JAL :) Let's see if I remember to take pictures before I start eating my meals this time :)

There are so much updates. Japan Airlines has actually put the catalog up for a while but they haven't shown the links on their site until yesterday. Nothing special from the catalog and I don't see any good deals...I guess I can save some money this time :) For the shopaholics, you can find the online catalog from JAL website.

Japan Airlines has uploaded its movie list for August. There's a change in the format compare to the previous month. Now they show a complete list of MAGIC-I, II, III, IV movies available instead of just MAGIC-I and II. However, they no longer show which movies are shown on the main screen nor what movies are available on business class on MAGIC-I and II flights.

Japan Airlines has updated its website with July wallpapers. This month's JAL picks are the Egypt scenery from JALPAK, airplane wallpaper from JAC and the beautiful island series.

If you haven't heard about Japan Air Commuter (JAC) before, it is a regional airlines based in Kagoshima Airport and is subsidiary of Japan Airlines. It was established on July 1 1983. So Happy 26th Birthday JAC! To find out more about JAC, you can visit their website (Japanese only)