JAL bankrupt; marks Japan's biggest corporate fall

Japan Airlines, once a proud international flag carrier, now crippled by massive debts on Tuesday filed for bankruptcy, in one of the biggest failures in country's corporate history.

With its debt running into an estimated $22 billion, JAL's management formally decide to begin bankruptcy proceedings, making the company the biggest failure outside the financial sector since World War II, Kyodo news agency reported.

Asia's biggest airline's shares plunged to an all time low of just three yen, reducing the market value of the company to just about $90 million, even less than the cost of a single new A-380 jumbo jet.

But the airline is said to keep flying with an injection of billions of dollars from public funds, de-listing of its shares from the stock exchange from next month and slashing more than 15,000 jobs.

The company has filed for court protection from the creditors, which will be followed up by a restructuring plan crafted by the government.

Kyodo said that the airline's entire top management have resigned and the company was being handed over to Kazou Inamori, a Buddhist monk turned Japan's leading management guru.

Eyeing its lucrative landing slot shares in the Asian region, leading global aviation players like US carriers American Airlines and Delta Airlines as well as Dutch carrier KLM and Air France are bidding for slice of JAL.