Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
Japan Airlines is bankrupt; it filed for protection from creditors under the country’s corporate rehabilitation law on Tuesday. The government is guaranteeing that the company will continue flying, but a court-supervised reorganization is expected to shrink the carrier. Shareholders’ funds will be eliminated and creditors will have to forgive debt, while the government stumps up cash to recapitalize the airline.
Qantas is reiterating its commitment to the Vietnamese affiliate of its Jetstar budget airline chain, even as the branch airline suffers a barrage of difficulties with the Vietnamese government. The affiliate, Jetstar Pacific, is accused of violating maintenance rules, its former CEO has been detained over fuel hedging losses and the Vietnamese transport minister demands that the airline ditch its “foreign” name.
Bradley Perrett (Beijing), Adrian Schofield (Washington)
Japan Airlines expects to emerge from bankruptcy with one-third fewer employees, 30% lower pension costs and a restored balance sheet, but intensive state control of its restructuring suggests it may remain a tool of the government, rather than a genuinely competitive company.
