JAL sales in April-Dec. Update Feb. 7, 2026.

JAL sales in April-Dec. at record 1.51 tril. yen on firm inbound tourism

Article source: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260203/p2g/00m/0bu/029000c

Ideas

Both JAL and ANA should be seeing record sales and even record profits at this time as Japan is experiencing unseen records in foreign tourists entering Japan this past year. 

Of course maybe other airlines too are seeing record numbers as foreign tourists just keep going to Japan which might or might be at the saturation point yet for sustainable numbers.

It's interesting that Japan is not really that big of a country and travel from Hokkaido to Okinawa is really not that far but there seems to be a lot of domestic plane travel in Japan along with a lot of shinkansen or bullet train travel in Japan too.

At around 125 million people Japan is densely populated country and face to face business meetings is still an important component of doing business in Japan as Zoom and Microsoft teams have not completely taken over the business meeting aspect of business people meeting each other in Japan.

And yes, the situation with China is a little iffy right now as Japan and China once again are having challenges and travel from China to Japan has again taken a back seat to Chinese tourists visiting Japan.

Yes, a decrease in demand 20 to 25 percent might be considered significant but the overall effect might not be that bad as all other countries seem to be filling the gap as again there are a record numbers of foreign tourists entering Japan and JAL and both ANA might be getting their share of bookings these days.

China seems to be specialize in group bookings as maybe there is/are safety in numbers as maybe they prefer to travel in groups while other foreign tourists might prefer to travel alone or with one or two people only not in large groups.

For good or bad, intentional or unintentional, Japan every few years keeps making the same mistakes that upset both China or South Korea or both at the same time.

And again it's going to take some time before the situation calms down as always it seems to work itself out one way or another.

While its hopeful that they appetite to travel to Japan will return its not highly likely as what the powers to be say in China still resonates with a large part of the population but there are always the adventurous ones who might travel to Japan and ignore the powers to be.

More and more Chinese travelers, as has been suggested, are now not traveling in large groups but traveling on their own to places such as Japan or even South Korea these days.

JAL and maybe ANA too seem to have a good balance between domestic bookings and domestic bookings which complement each other and when one part is a little down the other part might be a little up which keeps the profits sustainable.

The only real grip, and its global, as ever since the pandemic or the end of the pandemic ticket prices have increased significantly and of course so has demand.

And unfortunately, airlines are a business so they always talk about customer service but in reality good customer service seems to be eroding in many airlines these days as they seem to be nit-picking with fee increases for luggage, fee increases for seats, and fee increases for whatever they feel they can get away with without regard or caring about the customers.

And yes, again, airlines are a business and as a business they have to maintain a certain level of profit to keep shareholder happy which unfortunately means due to fuel price increases, increases in demand, and increase in a number or areas they increase tickets prices.

And then there is there the segmentation of airline tickets to increase profits by separating the prices of aisle seats and window seats, segmenting premium economy from standard economy and who knows what else airlines do to get as much profit as they can from the customer.

JAL and ANA, while known for quality customer service do the same thing with many things related to the segmentation of customers as again they need to maximize profit as much as possible.

These budget carriers seem to always be having their ownership changed from one company to the next as they just can't seem to find the right business model and just are not sustainable in the long run.'

JAL already has some affiliate budget airline or regional airlines and there is only a limited number of resources and unfortunately budget airlines are always being sold or revived every few years or so it seems.

And yes, as expected JAL will probably transform jetstar into a new brand or something new version of the brand which seems to be quite common these days for budget airlines.

The barriers to entry for new budget airlines seems to be quite high and most just don't last that long no matter what they do, as they are only a limited number of travelers and if there are too many airlines and even too many budget airlines unfortunately the weak get left behind.

Of course name-brand loyalty is a major hurdle for any budget airline to overcome as flying with ANA or Japan in Japan, United or Delta in the US, or Korea Air in South Korea and or any of the name-brand Chinese airlines in China is a lot more earlier and maybe safer but maybe not easy on the budget.

Have a nice day!