The story that breaks the mold in traditional Japan. How a flight attendant became the first woman in charge of Japan Airlines

The appointment in January of Mitsuko Tottori to head Japan Airlines (JAL) caused a real shock in the business world in this country. Not only was Tottori the first woman in charge of the airline, but she had started her career as a member of the cabin crew, reports the BBC.

Headlines appeared from “first woman” and “first former flight attendant” up to “unusual” and “you can not!“.

One website even described her as “an alien molecule” or “a mutant”, an allusion to the fact that he worked at Japan Air System (JAS), a much smaller airline that JAL bought two decades ago.

“I didn’t know there was a mutant alien“, said Tottori with a laugh during a discussion with BBC journalist Mariko Oi.

Mitsuko Tottori was not one of the elite businessmen that the airline used to appoint to management positions.

“I didn’t expect to get so much attention”

Of the last 10 men to hold the position, seven studied at the country’s top university. Tottori is a graduate of an all-female college.

With her appointment, JAL joins the less than 1% of Japan’s top companies run by women.

“I don’t consider myself the first woman or the first former flight attendant. I want to act as an individual, so I didn’t expect to get so much attention. But I realize that the public or our employees don’t necessarily see me that way”she stated.

His appointment also came just two weeks after JAL flight attendants were praised for successfully evacuating passengers from a plane that collided with a coast guard aircraft during landing.

The Japan Airlines plane was engulfed in flames after the collision on the runway at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.

Five of the six crew members aboard the Coast Guard plane were killed and the captain was injured. However, a few minutes after the collision, all 379 people on board the Airbus A350-900 escaped safely.

The very rigorous training of the airline’s flight attendants was suddenly in the spotlight.

The deadliest plane crash

As a former flight attendant, Tottori learned firsthand the importance of aviation safety.

Four months after becoming a flight attendant in 1985, Japan Airlines was involved in the deadliest plane crash in aviation history, killing 520 people at Mount Osutaka.

“Every JAL staff member has the opportunity to climb Mount Osutaka and talk to those who remember the crash“, Tottori confessed.

“We also display aircraft wreckage at our safety promotion center so that instead of reading about it in a book, we can look and feel for ourselves to learn about the crash.”

Although her appointment to the leadership position came as a surprise, JAL has turned around quickly since it went bankrupt in 2010, the country’s largest company failure outside of the financial sector.

The airline was able to continue operating thanks to significant financial support from the state, and the business underwent a radical restructuring, with a new board of directors and new management.

The savior was a 77-year-old retiree and Buddhist monk, Kazuo Inamori. In an interview conducted in 2012, the man stated that JAL was an arrogant company that did not care about its customers.

JAL has come a long way since Inamori was chairman of the board, and the attention its first female chairman is enjoying is not surprising.

The Japanese government has been trying for almost a decade to increase the number of women in leadership positions in the country.

It currently wants a third of management positions in large companies to be held by women by 2030, after failing to achieve this goal in 2020.

“It’s not just about the mindset of corporate leaders, it’s also important that women trust them to become a manager“, said Tottori. “I hope my nomination will encourage other women to try things they were afraid to try before.”