ANA Holdings Inc. President Koji Shibata said Wednesday the company would consider buying domestically made passenger jets if there is a future project, a week after Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. formally scraped its plan to develop one.
The parent of All Nippon Airways Co. was the first customer for Mitsubishi's SpaceJet, Japan's first domestically manufactured passenger jet, ordering 25 aircraft when the project was officially launched in 2008.
But the development was delayed repeatedly due to a lack of know-how and skilled engineers, leading the company last week to finally pull the plug on the high-profile project that has cost about 1 trillion yen ($7.5 billion).
"It is very regrettable that the domestically made jet project was halted," Shibata said at a press conference in Tokyo. "I would like to pay my respects to engineers and other people involved."
Asked if he would consider buying a domestically made passenger jet again if there was a similar project in the future, he said, "If there is an aircraft that has performance that satisfies our customers, we would consider buying it, whether it is domestically manufactured or not."
The company has been able to make up for the delay in delivery of the aircraft by utilizing other planes so far, he said.
The airline reduced its fleet during the coronavirus pandemic but will increase it to above the level before the pandemic toward fiscal 2030, it said.
Separately, ANA announced its profit targets for fiscal 2025 in its new mid-term management plan.
It expects 200 billion yen in operating profit and 122 billion yen in net profit for the year ending March 2026. It posted an operating loss of 173.1 billion yen and a net loss of 143.6 billion yen for fiscal 2021.
The airline will ramp up profit by expanding its non-airline areas, such as its mileage business, while continuing to absorb recovering air travel demand amid easing anti-virus measures.
It expects domestic and international demand to recover to pre-pandemic levels by fiscal 2025.
