Another JAL LCC rumor with Jetstar by Nikkei

Nikkei Business Daily has reported yet another Japan Airlines (JAL) low cost carrier (LCC) rumor today. According to the paper, JAL and Jetstar will set up a new Narita (NRT) based LCC together with Mitsubishi and this new LCC will start operations by December 2012.

According to the report, the new LCC is tentatively called Jetstar Japan. Each of JAL and Jetstar will hold 33.3% of the shares while Mitsubishi will hold 33.4% initially. But they expect Mitsubishi's stack will drop when they find more investors by summer 2012. So JAL and Jetstar will be the biggest shareholders eventually. The initial investment will be 3 billion yen.

As mentioned before, Jetstar Japan will be based in NRT. It will provide both domestic and international service. It will focus on leisure routes from NRT such as Sapporo (CTS), Fukuoka (FUK) and Okinawa (OKA) domestically, and China, Korean and Guam internationally.

One interesting note regarding Mitsubishi's investment is that they are hoping to make profit through handling the Airbus plane leasing of Jetstar Japan too (yike...Airbus :()

This is the 3rd LCC rumor we have in the past 6 months. First Mainichi broke the news in March, then Nikkei started yet another one in June with a different break down of share allocation. The good news is they claim Jetstar Japan will made the announcement next week so we will know very soon :)