TOKYO – Japan Airlines is set to file for bankruptcy Tuesday, writing Japanese history as one of the nation's biggest corporate failures from which it could emerge a leaner, self-sustaining carrier.

The country's flagship carrier, called JAL for short, convened a special board meeting in the afternoon, where it decided to file for protection from creditors under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law _ Japan's version of Chapter 11, according to Kyodo News agency. The filing will be followed by a restructuring plan crafted by a government-backed corporate turnaround body.

President Haruka Nishimatsu is expected to resign. Leadership of the company will be handed over to Kazuo Inamori, a buddhist monk and founder of electronic components behemoth Kyocera Corp. and Japan's No. 2 mobile carrier KDDI Corp.

The government will also offer assurances that it backs the rehabilitation and intends to keep JAL flying.

"The government wants to continue to support JAL to ensure its continued stable and safe operations," said transport minister Seiji Maehara hours before the expected filing.

The day's events culminate a process that began in October when JAL _ saddled with debts of 1.5 trillion yen ($16.5 billion) _ first turned to the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp. for help. Under a prepackaged restructuring strategy, it will embark on a massive overhaul to shed the fat and inefficiency that hobbled Asia's biggest airline.

Geoffrey Tudor, a principal analyst at Japan Aviation Management Research and former JAL employee, said the airline needs to be leaner and meaner.

"It wasn't commercially brutal enough in dealing with the facts of economic life," said Tudor, who spent 38 years at the Japanese carrier and now watches its collapse with a mixture of sadness and frustration.

The plan calls for about 15,600 job cuts, or a third of JAL's work force, by March 2013 and will require the airline to halve the number of its subsidiaries which span everything from hotels to credit cards, according to Kyodo. The Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp. will invest about 300 billion yen ($3.3 billion) in the carrier, and JAL's main lenders have been asked to waive about 350 billion yen in liabilities.

What may take longer to emerge is the winner of a fierce tug-of-war between Delta Air Lines and American Airlines for a slice of JAL's business. Despite its woes, the airline's access to Asia is a mouthwatering prize for foreign airlines.

Investors Tuesday braced for a seemingly inevitable removal of the airline's shares from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The issue, which has lost more than 90 percent of its value over the last week, tumbled another 40 percent Tuesday to 3 yen at one point. It finished flat at 5 yen. The company is now essentially worthless, with a market capitalization of about 13.7 billion yen ($150 million) _ the price of one Boeing 787 jet.

It's a humbling outcome for Japan's once-proud flagship carrier which was founded in 1951 and came to symbolize the country's rapid economic growth. The state-owned airline expanded quickly in the decades after World War II and was privatized in 1987.

But it soon became the victim of its own ambitions.

When Japan's property and stock bubble of the 1980s burst, risky investments in foreign resorts and hotels undermined its bottom line. JAL also shouldered growing pension and payroll costs, as well as a big network of unprofitable domestic routes it was politically obligated to maintain.

"As an airline product, it's always had a high reputation," said Peter Harbison, executive chairman of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, a Sydney-based aviation market research firm. "But from a cost base, it's generally been something of an industry joke."

Inexplicable spending like chauffeuring flight crew to and from home is "an outstanding example of a culture that really shouldn't belong in the 21st century," he said.

More recently, JAL's passenger traffic has slowed amid the global economic downturn, swine flu fears, competition from Japanese rival All Nippon Airways Co. and a spate of safety lapses that tarnished its image. It lost 131.2 billion yen ($1.4 billion) in the six months through September.

Its four government bailouts since 2001 only exacerbated JAL's problems, officials now say. Maehara last week blamed previous administrations, controlled by the opposition Liberal Democrats, for propping up an ailing JAL for years without reforming the company.

Passengers seemed to agree as much.

"I guess they did not work in earnest and so fell into this situation," said Isao Sasaki, 72, who waited in line Tuesday at a JAL check-in counter at Tokyo's Haneda Airport. "Weren't they spoiled as they always had protection from the government?"

Delta Air Lines _ the world's biggest airline operator _ and rival American Airlines are courting JAL with massive financial offers as the U.S. carriers seek to expand their Asian networks.

Delta and its SkyTeam partners have offered $1 billion, including $500 million in cash to lure JAL away from American's oneworld alliance. American Airlines and its partners say they are ready to inject $1.4 billion cash into the Japanese airline, up from a previous $1.1 billion offer.

As of March, JAL's fleet consisted of 279 aircraft, mainly from Boeing Co. It served 220 airports in 35 countries and territories, including 59 domestic airports.

It carried 11.7 million international passengers last fiscal year and 41.2 million travelers domestically. International traffic was down 12.4 percent from the previous year, while the domestic passenger count fell 1.8 percent.

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AP Writer Jay Alabaster and APTN staffer Kaori Hitomi contributed to this report.

SINGAPORE (AFP) - – Singapore's budget carrier Tiger Airways on Wednesday launched an initial public offering (IPO) with the aim of raising 246.8 million Singapore dollars (178 million US) to fund its expansion plans.

Tiger kicked off the share sale soon after registering its prospectus with the Monetary Authority of Singapore, fixing a maximum price of 1.65 dollars a share.

"The under-developed low-fare, low-cost model in the majority of countries in the region presents opportunities for our future growth," said Tiger president and chief executive Tony Davis.

"We are now ready to embark on the next stage of growth, and believe that a listing will help fuel that growth," he said in a statement.

The firm said the move would make it the first budget carrier to list on the Singapore stock exchange.

Tiger Airways, which is 49 percent owned by flag carrier Singapore Airlines, said it would set aside 166 million dollars from the proceeds to pay for the planned purchase of new Airbus A320 jets.

It is also looking to establish new operating bases and airlines when the opportunities arise, as well as repay short-term loans.

Tiger said the region was poised to be the biggest travel market by 2020 and was aiming to expand its route network to take advantage of growing demand for air travel.

The carrier wants to expand its current fleet of 17 Airbus A320 jets to 68 by December 2015 as it plans to fly to more destinations within the region and in Australia.

"We intend to apply our proven low-cost airline model to offer domestic and/or international air travel in other Asian markets through the creation of additional operating airlines," said Davis.

"We also plan to increase frequency of flights on existing routes and expand operations by commencing new routes between the airports we now serve, as well as add new destinations from our existing bases in Singapore and Australia."

Tiger, which began its first commercial flights in September 2004, flies from Singapore to destinations across Asia including popular holiday spots such as Penang in Malaysia, and Bangkok and Phuket in Thailand.

It has also expanded into Australia where it offers domestic flights between key cities and towns across the continent.

In its prospectus, Tiger said it made a net loss of 50.8 million dollars and revenues of 378 million dollars in the financial year ended March 2009 compared to a profit of 9.9 million dollars on income of 303.8 million dollars in the previous year.

In the six months to September 2009, losses totalled 8.3 million dollars which was smaller than the 25.2 million dollars recorded in the same period the year before.

The budget carrier market has expanded rapidly in Southeast Asia, where Tiger Airways is competing against Malaysia's AirAsia and a host of other low-fare carriers.

Remains of the first airplane ever taken to Antarctica, in 1912, have been found by Australian researchers, the team announced Saturday.

The Mawson's Huts Foundation had been searching for the plane for three summers before stumbling upon metal pieces of it on New Year's Day.

"The biggest news of the day is that we've found the air tractor, or at least parts of it!" team member Tony Stewart wrote on the team's blog from Cape Denison in Antarctica's Commonwealth Bay.

Australian polar explorer and geologist Douglas Mawson led two expeditions to Antarctica in the early 1900s, on the first one bringing along a single-propeller Vickers plane. The wings of the plane, built in 1911, had been damaged in a crash before the expedition, but Mawson hoped to use it as a kind of motorized sled.

Stewart said the 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition used the plane to tow gear onto the ice in preparation for their sledging journeys.

But the plane's engine could not withstand the extreme temperatures and it was eventually abandoned.

The plane, the first from Britain's Vickers factory, had not been seen since the mid-1970s, when researchers photographed the steel fuselage nearly encompassed in ice.

The foundation _ which works at Cape Denison to conserve the huts used by Mawson in his expeditions _ believed the plane would still be where it was left by Mawson, near the huts and the harbor, which is covered in ice for most of the year.

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