Tokyo, 26 April, 2024 (GNP): A ripple effect was seen throughout Japan’s corporate landscape in January when Mitsuko Tottori was appointed as the new president of Japan Airlines (JAL).
The airline, which was previously recognized for its conventional leadership, broke the mold by selecting a former member of the cabin staff as its first female CEO.
Her selection made headlines around the country, with some criticizing and others applauding the decision.
Terms like “first woman” and “first former flight attendant” were used extensively in the media, and some even went so far as to call her “unusual” or even liken her to a “alien molecule.”
The last alludes to her employment at Japan Air System (JAS), a smaller airline that JAL had purchased twenty years prior.
She brushed off the comment of being a “alien molecule” and took the response in stride when speaking media. Seven of the previous ten CEOs were from Japan’s top universities, indicating that her route to the top position was not the usual one.
Ms. Tottori, on the other hand, received her degree from a lesser-known junior college that was only for women. However, with her promotion, JAL joins the select group of fewer than 1% of Japanese companies headed by a woman.
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Ms. Tottori was selected after JAL gained notoriety for its quick and successful passenger evacuation of Flight 516 after it collided with a coast guard aircraft at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.
An enormous amount of credit for the 379 passengers’ successful evacuation belongs to the airline’s extremely talented flight attendants.
Based on her personal experience as a former flight attendant, Ms. Tottori has extensive understanding in safety and crisis management.
She spoke of a terrible event that happened early in her career—the deadliest single-aircraft catastrophe in aviation history, which occurred on Mount Osutaka in 1985 and claimed the lives of 520 passengers aboard a JAL flight.
Employees attend JAL’s safety promotion center to learn about the crash and hike Mount Osutaka in remembrance of the victims, as part of the company’s ongoing commitment to safety.
The astonishment surrounding Ms. Tottori’s selection also illustrates how much JAL has changed since declaring bankruptcy in 2010.
Kazuo Inamori, a retired businessman and ordained Buddhist monk, led the company’s transformation from a bureaucratic past to one where people are promoted from frontline roles.
With an aim of having women in one-third of these positions by 2030, the Japanese government has been working for almost ten years to boost the number of women in leadership positions in large enterprises.
