{"id":5293,"date":"2024-04-26T11:32:14","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T11:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=5293"},"modified":"2024-04-26T12:00:05","modified_gmt":"2024-04-26T12:00:05","slug":"the-ex-flight-attendant-who-now-leads-the-airline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=5293","title":{"rendered":"The ex-flight attendant who now leads the airline"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>3 Minute, 39 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

When\u00a0Mitsuko Tottori was named as the new boss of Japan Airlines<\/a>\u00a0(JAL) in January, it sent a shockwave across the country\u2019s corporate sector.<\/p>\n

Not only was Ms Tottori the carrier\u2019s first female boss, she had also started her career as a member of cabin crew.<\/p>\n

The headlines ranged from \u201cfirst woman\u201d and \u201cfirst former flight attendant\u201d to \u201cunusual\u201d and \u201cno way!\u201d<\/p>\n

One website even described her as \u201can alien molecule\u201d or \u201ca mutant\u201d, a reference to her having worked at Japan Air System (JAS), a much smaller airline that JAL bought two decades ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know about an alien mutant,\u201d Ms Tottori laughs as she spoke to me from Tokyo.<\/p>\n

In short, she was not from the elite group of businessmen that the carrier had customarily appointed to its top job.<\/p>\n

Out of the last 10 men who held the post, seven were educated at the country\u2019s top university. Ms Tottori is a graduate of a far less prestigious women-only junior college.<\/p>\n

With Ms Tottori\u2019s appointment, JAL has joined the less than 1% of Japan\u2019s top companies led by women.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think of myself as the first woman or the first former flight attendant. I want to act as an individual so I didn\u2019t expect to get this much attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I realise the public or our employees don\u2019t necessarily see me like that,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

Her appointment also came just two weeks after JAL\u2019s flight attendants were lauded for the successful evacuation of passengers from a plane that collided with a coast guard aircraft during landing.<\/p>\n

Japan Airlines Flight 516 burst into flames after the collision on the runway at Tokyo\u2019s Haneda airport.<\/p>\n

Five of the six crew on the coastguard plane died and captain was injured. However, within minutes of the collision, all 379 people on board the Airbus A350-900 had safely escaped.<\/p>\n

The rigorous training of the carrier\u2019s flight attendants was suddenly in the spotlight.<\/p>\n

As a former flight attendant herself, Ms Tottori learned the importance of aviation safety first hand.<\/p>\n

Four months after she became a flight attendant in 1985, Japan Airlines was involved in the deadliest single aircraft accident in aviation history, which killed 520 people on Mount Osutaka.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery member of staff at JAL is given an opportunity to climb Mount Osutaka and speak to those who remember the accident,\u201d Ms Tottori says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also exhibit aircraft debris at our safety promotion centre so instead of just reading about it in a book, we look with our own eyes and feel with our own skin to learn about the accident.\u201d<\/p>\n

While her appointment in the top job came as a surprise, JAL has changed rapidly since it went bankrupt in 2010, in what was the country\u2019s biggest ever corporate failure outside the financial sector.<\/p>\n

The airline managed to continue flying thanks to major state-backed financial support and the business underwent a sweeping restructuring with a new board and management.<\/p>\n

Its saviour was then-77-year-old retiree and ordained Buddhist monk, Kazuo Inamori. Without his transformational influence it is unlikely that someone like Ms Tottori could have become JAL\u2019s leader.<\/p>\n

I spoke to him\u00a0in an interview in 2012<\/a>. He did not mince his words, saying JAL was an arrogant firm that did not care about its customers.<\/p>\n

Under Mr Inamori\u2019s leadership the company promoted people from frontline operations, like pilots and engineers, rather than from bureaucratic posts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt very uncomfortable because the company didn\u2019t feel like a private firm at all,\u201d Mr Inamori, who died in 2022, told me. \u201cMany former government officials used to get golden parachutes into the firm.\u201d<\/p>\n

JAL has come a long way since then, and the attention its first female president is receiving is not surprising.<\/p>\n

The Japanese government has been trying for almost a decade to increase the number of female bosses in the country.<\/p>\n

It now wants a third of leadership positions at major businesses to go to women by 2030, after\u00a0failing to achieve the goal by 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not just about the corporate leaders\u2019 mindset, but it is also important for women to have the confidence to become a manager,\u201d says Ms Tottori.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope my appointment would encourage other women to try things that they were afraid of trying before.\u201d<\/p>

\n
\n \n
\n \n \"Happy\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Happy <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n \n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Sad\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Sad <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Excited\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Excited <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Sleepy\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Sleepy <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n \n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Angry\"\n <\/a>\n
Angry<\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Surprise\"\n <\/a>\n
Surprise<\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When\u00a0Mitsuko Tottori was named as the new boss of Japan Airlines\u00a0(JAL) in January, it sent a shockwave across the country\u2019s corporate sector. Not only was Ms Tottori the carrier\u2019s first… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"yes","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5315,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5293\/revisions\/5315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}