Japan Air Transport
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Japan Air Transport Corporation (日本航空輸送株式会社?) was the national airline of Japan from 1928 to 1938.
JAT was formed on October 30, 1928 as a corporation under the control of the Ministry of Communications. It began flight operations in 1929. It initially used the Imperial Japanese Army air base at Tachikawa as its terminal in Tokyo: in 1931, it moved to Haneda Airport.
JAT was heavily subsidized by the Japanese government, receiving the equivalent of $1 billion in today's currency prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. During the early 1930s, its aircraft were often chartered by the military for missions in Asia. This role declined as Japan's control of China solidified, and military missions in China were taken over by three new carriers which JAT helped to found: Manchurian Airways, Huitong Airways and China Airways.
JAT carried 70,000 passengers in 1938, 2.6% of the world's total number of airline passengers that year.
In December 1938, the government established a new airline, Imperial Japanese Airways, to handle all civil aviation in the Empire of Japan.
[edit] Aircraft
- Fokker Trimotor (1929-1938)
- Douglas DC-2 (1936-1938)
[edit] References
- Early Japanese Civil Aviation at Century of Flight
- JAT timetable, 1929
