Flight attendant becomes CEO

“Former Flight Attendant Breaks Corporate Mold as Japan Airlines’ First Female Boss”

When Mitsuko Tottori was appointed as the new CEO of Japan Airlines (JAL) in January, it created ripples in Japan’s corporate sphere.

Ms. Tottori not only became the first female CEO of the carrier but also began her career as a cabin crew member.

Headlines ranged from “first woman” and “first former flight attendant” to “unconventional” and “unexpected.”

One website even referred to her as “an alien molecule” or “a mutant,” alluding to her previous employment at Japan Air System (JAS), a smaller airline that JAL acquired two decades ago.

“I didn’t know about being called an alien mutant,” Ms. Tottori chuckled during our conversation from Tokyo.

In essence, she didn’t come from the usual pool of businessmen that JAL typically selected for its top positions.

Out of the last 10 male CEOs, seven were graduates of the country’s prestigious universities. In contrast, Ms. Tottori graduated from a less prestigious women-only junior college.

With her appointment, JAL has joined the less than 1% of Japan’s major companies led by women.

“I don’t see myself as the first woman or the first former flight attendant. I want to be seen as an individual, so I didn’t expect this much attention,” she remarked.

“But I understand that the public and our employees might not see me the same way,” she added.

Her appointment came just two weeks after JAL’s flight attendants were praised for evacuating passengers successfully from a plane that collided with a coast guard aircraft during landing. Japan Airlines Flight 516 burst into flames after the collision on the runway at Tokyo’s Haneda airport.

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

This incident put the rigorous training of the airline’s flight attendants in the spotlight.

As a former flight attendant herself, Ms. Tottori understands the importance of aviation safety firsthand.

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.

“Every JAL staff member has the opportunity to visit Mount Osutaka and speak to those who remember the accident,” Ms. Tottori explained.

“We also exhibit aircraft debris at our safety promotion center so instead of just reading about it in a book, we see it with our own eyes and feel it with our own skin to learn about the accident.”

While her appointment as CEO was surprising, JAL has undergone significant changes since its bankruptcy in 2010, which was Japan’s biggest corporate failure outside the financial sector.

The airline continued flying with major state-backed financial support and underwent a comprehensive restructuring with a new board and management.

Its savior was Kazuo Inamori, then a 77-year-old retiree and ordained Buddhist monk. Without his transformative influence, someone like Ms. Tottori would unlikely have become JAL’s leader.

I interviewed him in 2012, and he didn’t hold back, describing JAL as an arrogant firm that didn’t care about its customers.

Under Mr. Inamori’s leadership, the company promoted people from frontline operations, such as pilots and engineers, rather than from bureaucratic positions.

“I felt very uncomfortable because the company didn’t feel like a private firm at all,” Mr. Inamori, who passed away in 2022, said in the interview. “Many former government officials used to get golden parachutes into the firm.”

JAL has come a long way since then, and the attention its first female president is receiving is not surprising.

The Japanese government has been striving for almost a decade to increase the number of female executives in the country.

Now, it aims for a third of leadership positions at major businesses to be held by women by 2030, after missing the 2020 target.

“It’s not just about the mindset of corporate leaders, but it’s also important for women to have the confidence to become managers,” Ms. Tottori remarked.

“I hope my appointment encourages other women to try things they were previously afraid of.”