As it posted a JPY151.8 billion yen (USD1.35 billion) EBIT loss for the first half of its 2021-22 financial year, JAL Group also issued its first forecast for the full year - a loss of JPY198 billion (USD1.74 billion), on revenue for the year of JPY766 billion (USD6.74 billion). It had previously said in August that ongoing uncertainty was making such predictions impossible.

Cash burn, the JAL - Japan Airlines (JL, Tokyo Haneda) parent said in a November 2 disclosure on the half-year results, will cease altogether in the third quarter and turn positive during the fourth. Its workforce will shrink by 2,500 people by natural attrition by the end of the business year on March 31, 2022, to 33,500 employees, as older workers retire and a freeze on new hiring continues.

The return to profitability in the January-to-March quarter assumes that domestic demand recovers to 92% of pre-pandemic levels (full year 2019) during that period, and international demand to 23%. It would then be profitable in the year ending March 2023. But its second-quarter 2021 average for these stats was just 34% for domestic and 8.1% for international.

Weak demand and travel restrictions continued to drag on Japan Airlines’ results for the second quarter, with a consolidated net loss of JPY104.9 billion (USD92.3 million) for the April-September period. Japan was under an emergency for much of this usually high-yield period. However, the first-half performance was an improvement on the JPY223.9 billion (USD1.97 billion) loss seen the previous year.

“Cost control is the most important issue in the current situation [and] the group is making every effort to control real fixed costs, which for the second quarter stood at JPY230.9 billion [USD2 billion]. We have steadily pushed down on the annual target of JPY500 billion [USD4.4 billion], and we expect to reduce it to JPY475 billion [USD4.2 billion] annually,” Hideki Kikuyama, the company’s chief financial officer, said during a press conference.

“Although we have expressed strict business forecasts today, we are confident that our business performance is in a full-scale recovery phase,” he added.

Japan is still under strict regulations preventing most non-resident foreigners from entering, and a fully-fledged aviation recovery is emerging more slowly than was previously hoped. JAL’s results and forecasts were released a few days after ANA Holdings revised downwards its own projections and unveiled plans to cut its workforce by about 9,000 employees by March 2026.