Japan Airlines Corp. Chairman Kazuo Inamori said Wednesday the airline's die-hard, stubborn conventionality has finally started to ease since the former flag carrier went belly-up a year ago.

"JAL's bureaucratic culture has changed significantly, triggered by the bankruptcy," Inamori, who assumed the chairman's position last Feb. 1, told reporters. "Corporate performance itself has also improved. I am delighted."

To mark the end of its rehabilitation procedure at the end of March, the airline announced that from April 1 it will again sport the red crane logo it used for decades.

JAL President Masaru Onishi added, "We have put our feeling into the logo . . . we will go back to the basics, which is to keep the fighting spirit that our employees possessed at the time of JAL's founding." The red "tsurumaru" (crane circle) logo, adopted in the 1950s, was gradually phased out by new liveries and vanished in 2008.