日本航空公司的现状

Japan Airlines' flight 1381 takes off from Tokyo with a lot of "nobody". Empty seat after empty seat, it is a lonely flight for this reporter.

It is a very empty plane.

Most of the passengers are seated toward the front of this plane that sits about 160. But a majority of the seats are empty.

There's one guy.

Our destination--a small town in western Japan called Shirahama. Shirahama is near a world heritage site--a beautiful but remote and sparsely-populated area of Japan. Japan Airlines flies two flights in and out of this small airport twice a day. Figures from Japan Airlines show that for last November on average the Tokyo-Shirahama flights were more than half empty. And the airline says it's been this way for at least the past few months. After a brief fuel up...

The same situation. Empty.

The problem for Japan Airlines isn't that this plane is so empty, it's that so many of its domestic flights all over Japan are flying with so many empty seats. According to Japan Airlines, 65 percent of all of its domestic flights took off in November with 40 percent of the seats empty. Analysts say those flights lost money. This is a symbol of what's led the airline into its current financial state, says aviation specialist Kotaro Toriumi. The carrier which has suffered from the global economic downturn and the drop in air travel has been slow to alter its business model and adapt to the changing economy. Toriumi also says it's not entirely the fault of Japan Airlines.

Japan Airlines couldn't cut the uNPRofitable routes because of political pressure, says Toriumi. Local governments want it to sustain routes and airports traditionally seen as a source of vital transportation and income to its communities.

We'll be cut off if this route didn't exist, says this woman who just flew in from Shirahama.

Japan Airlines would not speak to cnn on camera citing its upcoming bankruptcy proceedings, but said in a statement that profitability of a route is not determined by passenger capacity alone. And the profitability varies from route to route. But the airline also says that it is suspending 20 uNPRofitable domestic routes and progressively switching to smaller aircraft both domestically and internationally. Bankruptcy will give Japan Airlines a somewhat fresh start. Analysts say it needs to learn from what's failed in order to fly high in the future.

Kyung Lah, cnn, Tokyo.

Glossary

fuel up: 加油

progressively: gradually