Nipponica

Star Flyer will resume regular international flights to and from Japan next year, anticipating traffic from Taiwan as domestic business passenger numbers languish.

The regional airline, which is based on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu, has not flown scheduled flights on international routes since March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. "We will restart international flights sometime in 2026," President Osamu Machida told Nikkei. "We want to take advantage of Kyushu's proximity to Asia."

More competition in international routes, the better.

Pilots are treated differently compared with other employees. The average annual salary for pilots is 20.05 million yen ($135,000), according to JAL's securities filings, while ground and cabin crews average 6.43 million yen and 5.92 million yen, respectively.

Before JAL filed for bankruptcy in 2010, pilots were allowed to commute from their homes to airports using chauffeured vehicles.

Tottori's remarks last week suggest that JAL management still faces obstacles disciplining pilots, who are regarded as nearly untouchable.

Wow, they are all little kings in their own kingdom which makes their behavior even more inexcusable.

Japan Airlines said Wednesday that it has decided to cut the remuneration of President Mitsuko Tottori and 36 other executives over a scandal involving a captain who drank excessively in Hawaii prior to his duties.

JAL dismissed the 64-year-old captain on Sept. 11 as a disciplinary measure, the airline said.

Tottori's monthly salary will be cut by 30% for two months. Managing Executive Officer Yukio Nakagawa, who also serves as chief safety officer, and Masaki Minami, who is in charge of flight operations, will have their pay reduced by 20% for one month. The remaining 34 executive officials will see their pay slashed by 10% for one month.

Docking a month or two salary from executives is hardly anything for what could have been a significant loss of life. Shameful.

The major Japanese air carrier has in recent years faced multiple similar drinking incidents involving its pilots, and it comes after a previous warning given to JAL in December by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

The ministry said JAL employees lacked due consideration for safety, urging the company to compile measures by the end of the month to prevent a repeat.

“We take this issue very seriously and deeply apologise for causing trouble and worries,” JAL president Mitsuko Tottori told a press conference, adding that her company will fire the pilot.

The fact that this pilot stayed employed this long is outrageous. This guy should have been fired on the spot for putting himself and hundreds of passengers and crew in danger.

Japan's JR East looks to roll out an autonomous train-operating system by 2035 on its Yamanote line, which loops around the heart of Tokyo, with plans to bring similar systems to shinkansen bullet trains around the same time.

The company, officially called East Japan Railway, seeks to fight growing labor shortages by enhancing operational efficiency and optimizing staffing under a business plan unveiled Tuesday.

"Driving jobs will be eliminated, but tasks that need to be performed by humans will only increase," President Yoichi Kise told a news conference the same day.

Now this has a great chance of success. Rail has less variables to deal with compared to free range vehicles (but still a complicated problem). Once Yamanote is perfected, this can be debuted anywhere.

Japanese airlines including All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines (JAL) are finding ways to collaborate to reduce costs and boost efficiency despite fierce competition, as their domestic businesses effectively operate in the red amid a sharp decline in business passengers.

ANA and JAL have installed shared ticket-checking systems at gates in 75 Japanese airports, or 80% of the country's total. Each airline previously had its own equipment, requiring separate personnel for gate system management. This led to inefficiencies like passengers being unable to use gates operated by other airlines, leading to a standardization push.

It was always very strange to have dedicated ticket scanning machine for each airline. This not only makes sense financially but also just for common sense. Not everything needs to be a custom solution.

After a string of operational incidents attributed to pilot error, the transport ministry issued a stern warning to ANA Wings Co., an ANA Group member, on Friday. The ministry has ordered the airline to submit a report on preventive measures by Sept. 19.

Genuinely don’t know how integrated the Wings pilot training is with ANA proper. If they have the same training program, shouldn’t this warning go to the parent company and have all training reviewed?

Scheduled to open a hotel at Koiwai Farm in Shizukuishi, Iwate Prefecture, in spring 2026, JR East plans to use flying cars for transfers to and from Morioka Station on the Tohoku Shinkansen line. The company also plans to provide aerial sightseeing tours of Koiwai Farm and Mt. Iwate, intending to establish the service as a new tourism resource.

JR East formed a capital partnership in May with SkyDrive Inc., a startup that develops flying cars. For commercial operations, the company plans to use SkyDrive’s aircraft, which can carry a pilot and two passengers for a total of three people.

Nice to see that the future sky traffic jams are coming to the Inaka too.

The new direct services will shorten the current 45-minute trip to Keisei's nearest station to the tower by about 10 minutes and allow passengers to reach Tokyo Skytree without transferring to a local line, Keisei Electric Railway President Takao Amano said in the recent interview.

Keisei Electric Railway runs some train operations linking Tokyo and Narita airport, a major air transportation hub located outside the capital in neighboring Chiba Prefecture.

The more connections to Narita the better but is Skytree and eastern Tokyo a key area for additional connections?

Certain chips shipped before 2017 are vulnerable, Sony said, acknowledging the issue after inquiries from Kyodo News. Over 1.8 billion FeliCa chips have been produced so far, powering transit cards as well as employee and student identification cards.

Cybersecurity experts warn attackers could alter transit cards, disrupt electronic payments or forge passes for sensitive facilities, with one analyst describing it as an "extremely serious" problem that undermines trust in infrastructure.

While it is good that the cards that have this flaw are almost a decade old, it is still a big vulnerability. The move to digital cards and (unfortunately) QR codes is pressing forward, but FeliCa is still the core of the Japan transit network.