The two eager American suitors of Japan Airlines

Delta Air Lines said Wednesday it would offer $1 billion to Japan Airlines if JAL will quit American Airlines' OneWorld alliance and join Delta's SkyTeam alliance instead. American immediately said it would offer that much for JAL not to quit OneWorld. What's so valuable about being in an alliance with an airline that is seeking its fourth bailout in eight years from the Japanese government? Why would anyone hand $1 billion to a company that runs an annual defifit of twice that much?  Japan has the world's largest economy after America itself. It has half the population of America on land the size of California. Japan is, economically speaking, bigger than it looks. And JAL is the largest Japanese airline, twice the size of its nearest competitor All-Nippon Airways. Codesharing alliances like OneWorld and SkyTeam are not mere clubs. Member airlines funnel traffic to each other, and share revenue from transfers. DAL and AMR are offering $1 billion to JAL in hopes of making a lot more than that in revenue from being allies in the future. It's probably worth mentioning, furtively, that Delta might also be feigning interest in an alliance shift that it doesn't expect to achieve, in order to drive up the cost of its arch-rival American keeping JAL in the codeshare fold. After all, Delta these days includes Northwest, which has always had the most extensive of flights to and from Japan; it is the busiest non-Japanese airline at Narita, and after United Airlines it has always been the busiest U.S. carrier through Asia. It has a cargo hub in Anchorage that handles loads of Japanese air cargo bound for the contiguous 48 states. I've mentioned that JAL's financial problems could affect Hawaii connections, even though JAL executives have personally assured local tourism executives that they won't. The explanation is that the Japanese government, in return for the next bailout, is making noises about demanding the replacement of the executives making these assurances. If that happens, Hawaii will depend on its ability to make money for the airline, and on the airline's ability to accept a few empty seats until better times. So far it appears that the outcome of all this will be as follows:

1. American will keep JAL in the OneWorld alliance, pumping cash into JAL in return.
2. JAL will get a fourth bailout from the government in Tokyo.
3. New executives will agree with the current ones that Hawaii is a moneymaker.

But you need to know that it's not certain yet, and that other outcomes could occur.