Here's a Bloomberg report that has a different point of view.

Japan Airlines Denies Report of Delta Capital Tie-Up (Update2)




By Kiyotaka Matsuda and Pavel Alpeyev
Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Japan Airlines Corp. denied a report by public broadcaster NHK that it’s in talks with Delta Air Lines Inc., the world’s largest carrier, on a capital tie- up.
“The report of the tie-up talks is not true,” Japan Airlines spokesman Satoru Tanaka said by telephone. Delta spokesman Kent Landers declined to comment on the reports.
The deal may be valued in tens of billions of yen (hundreds of millions of dollars), the broadcaster reported, without saying where it obtained the information. The Wall Street Journal, which followed the NHK report, said Delta is in talks to buy a stake in Japan Airlines, citing an unnamed person familiar with the situation. The Journal said discussions started a few weeks ago and may take several months to complete.
JAL, as Japan Airlines also is known, joined the Oneworld alliance two years ago, whose other members include AMR Corp.’s American Airlines and British Airways. Delta is a member of the competing SkyTeam partnership that includes Air France-KLM and Korean Air. The alliances allow airlines to put passengers on each other’s planes, increasing sales with fewer costs.
“The reports that the two companies are negotiating a tie- up are probably true,” Ryuhei Maeda, director-general of Japan’s Civil Aviation Bureau, said in an interview today. “This is one of the ideas I have strongly recommended to Japan Air.”
Delta already has an Asia hub at the Tokyo Narita International Airport that the airline gained with the purchase of Northwest Airlines last October.
Atlanta-based Delta ended the second quarter with $4.9 billion in cash and cash equivalents, and $500 million available under an untapped line of credit.
To contact the reporter on this story: Pavel Alpeyev in Tokyo at [email protected].