Taylor on Travel

Japan Airlines' loss of $1 billion (Yen99 billion) in the three months to May will take some beating even in a season of record airline losses, although Air France-KLM ran it close with a three-month loss to June of Euro612 million ($879 million).

There are particular reasons for the scale of the carrier's losses - most notably the fact the Japanese economy has been in trouble since the early 1990s, stuck in a cycle of stagnation and recession that followed the bursting of a property bubble. Japanese leisure and business traffic has never fully recovered.

Yet Japan remains the second-biggest economy in the world and there are economists who fear the Japanese experience of the past two decades offers a preview of what lies in store for the world economy.

Let's hope they are wrong. In the meantime, Japan Airlines appears in need of the Yen100 billion government bail-out it has been promised.