TOKYO (Nov 21): Japan Airlines (JAL) said on Friday that Skymark Airlines had sought talks to discuss a possible business tie-up that would put one of the country's few remaining budget carriers under the wing of a bigger rival.

"We received the request from Skymark Airlines on the possible cooperation," a spokesman for JAL said.

"We will start to discuss some possible cooperation but at the current stage, there is no decided agreement," he added.

Skymark would codeshare some flights with JAL and cooperate in sales, the Nikkei newspaper reported, although it said the tie-up was unlikely to involve a capital injection from JAL.

A spokeswoman for Skymark declined to discuss what cooperation the two were discussing.

Skymark shares jumped 26 percent in trading in Tokyo following the report, to end the day at 245 yen.

Difficulty for new budget carriers in winning landing rights on lucrative routes has meant that air fares in Japan have not been subject to the same tough price competition as in many other major aviation markets.

Skymark, which began flying in 1998, had been a rare case of a small carrier in Japan able to thrive without becoming an affiliate of either JAL or Japan's other big carrier, ANA Holdings.

Of the nine low-cost carriers flying within Japan, six - including Peach Aviation, Jetstar Japan and Air Do - are controlled by or affiliated with the two big carriers.

Stiff competition from the two big carriers on routes plied by Skymark squeezed revenue, prompting European aircraft maker Airbus in July to cancel the $2 billion sale of six A380 superjumbos after the upstart discount airline struggled to raise cash to pay instalments.

At the time, Skymark said Airbus had offered to deliver the aircraft if the airline agreed to become an affiliate of a bigger carrier.