Japan's All Nippon Airways (ANA) warned yesterday of a deeper net loss for the year to March but vowed to surpass its ailing rival Japan Airlines (JAL) and become Asia's largest airline.

ANA said its net loss would more than double to 65 billion yen ($719 million) from its earlier estimate of 28 billion yen for the financial year, due to weak demand for both its domestic and international flights.

The company also downgraded its revenue forecast for the year to 1.22 trillion yen from the 1.26 trillion yen projected earlier and its operating loss to 61 billion yen from 20 billion yen.

"Recovery was weaker than expected while competition among our rivals was more severe than we had originally thought," both at home and overseas, the company said in a statement.

But ANA predicted it would quickly return to the black, forecasting net profit of five billion yen for the next fiscal year.

"ANA will build up our growth on a more global stage to reach our goal of becoming number one in Asia," the company said.

JAL filed for bankruptcy protection in January with $26 billion of debt in one of Japan's biggest ever corporate failures, but has continued flying while it goes through painful state-led restructuring.

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