Japan Airlines President Haruka Nishimatsu said today it looks more natural at the moment to stay with the Oneworld airline alliance rather than defect to a rival group, Reuters reported.

His comments came as JAL reported a quarterly loss of about $357 million for the periods between July and September after showing a profit of about $447 million for the same period last year.

The loss was far from unexpected: The carrier is carrying $15 billion in debt and seeking its fourth state bailout this decade. A government-led task force is formulating a plan to restructure the airline.

At the same time, though, JAL is the prize in a battle between airline alliances to gain or secure market share in the region. Oneworld alliance partner American is trying to keep JAL in the carrier group, but Delta is trying to woo the Japanese airline to the SkyTeam alliance.

"It's a difficult choice, but considering our past, continuing to stay as an American Airlines partner would make more sense," Nishimatsu said. "Moving to a different aviation alliance would be costly ... and could take about two years. We need to consider such factors. as well."

The airline's focus now is to simply survive 2009. Quarterly revenues for the quarter dropped about 26%, the carrier reported.

"We have a relatively big exposure to international business, and this sector was hit really hard by the global economic downturn," Nishimatsu said during a news conference. "I think we'll need to push forward the downsizing of our international business."

JAL said it has applied for to restructure its debt so it can suspend payments to creditors, making it it easier to secure bridge loans.