Japan Airlines was founded in August 1951. Its first international flight came in 1954, from Tokyo to San Francisco by way of Wake Island and Honolulu. It put Japan back on the world's air map less than ten years after the war. As the national airline, JAL grew with Japan's economic boom and opened polar routes to Europe. It later flew one of the world's largest Boeing 747 fleets.
The 1985 crash of Flight 123 was the deadliest accident ever involving a single plane, and it changed the company forever. JAL now keeps a permanent Safety Promotion Center where staff study that accident. The airline was sold to private owners in 1987 and merged with domestic rival Japan Air System in 2002. Debt and money-losing routes then forced it into bankruptcy in January 2010.
That collapse was one of Japan's biggest business failures. Kyocera founder Kazuo Inamori then led a famous rescue. JAL returned to the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2012. It came back as one of the world's most profitable and punctual airlines. It has belonged to oneworld since 2007 and started budget arm ZIPAIR in 2020. Its new international flagship, the Airbus A350-1000, flies to New York from its two Tokyo bases.