After all of the speculation and spin, the airline alliance picture in Asia remained unchanged, as Japan Airlines chose to stick with American Airlines and Oneworld, spurning the advances of Delta and SkyTeam.

JAL and the Japanese government ended months of intrigue on Tuesday by confirming that the airline would remain in the Oneworld fold and seek antitrust immunity with longtime partner American under the aegis of the new open-skies agreement between the U.S. and Japan.

Japan said it would not implement the new agreement unless and until the antitrust provisions are granted to its airlines and their U.S. partners, virtually guaranteeing that whichever alliance partner JAL chose would secure immunity.

But American had much more to lose than immunized flight routes if JAL bolted to join Delta and SkyTeam. American relies on JAL as an Asian anchor for its global contracts.

While Oneworld could have secured another regional partner or more area gateways, such relationships take time, and American stood to lose important global customers in the interim.

Unwilling to let that happen, American upped the ante in its efforts to keep JAL during the bidding war with Delta and SkyTeam. The alliances offered equity and other assistance to the Japanese carrier, which recently filed for Japan’s version of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

In the end, American said its assistance offer topped $2 billion.

"When Oneworld executives and I recently met with JAL Chairman Dr. Kazuo Inamori and President Masaru Onishi and their team, we reiterated our commitment to support JAL on its path to success," American CEO Gerard Arpey said in a statement. "We look forward to working closely with JAL to support its restructuring efforts."

JAL said it wamted to keep customers happy.

"The biggest reason for our decision to strengthen our alliance with American is to avoid inconvenience to our customers as much as we can," said Daiji Nagai, JAL's senior vice president of corporate planning, in an Associated Press report.

Delta issued a comment touting its existing Asian network, even without the addition of JAL.

Still, analysts point out that with JAL in its fold, SkyTeam would have turned the Asian market into a duopoly with SkyTeam battling with the Star Alliance for regional supremacy.