After 39 Years Gov. Admits Narita Was A Mistake

[FG Lurker]

Let's face it. Narita fucked up. That's the bottom of it. Move on. It's 2009 for crying out fucking loud.

I don't have any problem with that. Having two airports in Tokyo and two in Osaka is really fucked, especially when in both cases it often means having to travel across the #%(&*!@#% city to go from an international flight to a domestic connection.

Get rid of Narita and get rid of Itami and have all Kanto flights from Haneda and all Kansai flights from KIX. (While we're at it they should get rid of Kobe airport as well, what a stupid fucking idea that was!)

If the national government is really determined to have both Narita and Haneda as international hubs though then Osaka should definitely stop funding KIX. The whole reason behind KIX was to have a major international airport in the Kansai region. If the national gov't determines that they are not going to support that then there is no point in Osaka continuing to dump money into the airport.

[Kuang_Grade]

Judging by the TV coverage, it seems they are more upset that J folks are supposedly going to Inchon via regional airports thus bypassing J flag carriers for international flights out of Japan, which I would imagine is happening because (although I haven't done any research on this) a) it is cheaper to do it this way (which more flights out of Hanada won't likely fix) and/or b) it is more conveinent for folks in the countryside to do this than to hop on a bunch of trains to get to an international airport in Japan, which more flights out of Hanada is unlikely to improve the situation (at least for folks outside of Tokyo).

[dimwit]

Judging by the TV coverage, .... it is more conveinent for folks in the countryside to do this than to hop on a bunch of trains to get to an international airport in Japan, which more flights out of Hanada is unlikely to improve the situation (at least for folks outside of Tokyo).

I think the present Hanada/Nairta situation works pretty well if you happen to live within sneezing distance of Tokyo. For the other 85 million of us, it sucks a big wally.

More international flight out of Hanada could work only if they build at least one or two more long runways to handling long distance flights or if they took traffic away from Narita and started handling more domestic flight at there.

[IkemenTommy]

More international flight out of Hanada could work only if they build at least one or two more long runways to handling long distance flights or if they took traffic away from Narita and started handling more domestic flight at there.

Reclaim some more land. Japan is damned good at that.

[Tsuru]

The mistake Osaka and Tokyo made is to keep the old airport open and not focus everything on making the new one work, leaving it sort of half-finished (especially true in NRT's case). When Nagoya's new airport opened in 2005 they built a proper airport with good amenities and shops, ALL scheduled traffic (domestic as well as international) was moved from the old airport to the new, easy to use direct train services were put in place, they even gave the IATA identifier of the old airport (NGO) to the new one. This forced everyone to use it and make it work, despite the fact that it was further away from the city.

Splitting cargo/pax between airports doesn't work as a lot of international carriers carry cargo on passenger flights to Japan, so I'm all in favor of closing Itami and Narita. No ifs, no buts, just tear up the runways Iraqi style and move all facilities and people over, or make them into JASDF bases or something. Sure, it's going to hurt in the short term, but the long term benefits are plain to see. Hell, you even can start expanding KIX and HND with 3rd/5th runways to keep the yaks happy!

[IkemenTommy]

Hell, you even can start expanding KIX and HND with 3rd/5th runways to keep the yaks happy!

And watch it sink into the ocean inch by inch again.

[FG Lurker]

And watch it sink into the ocean inch by inch again.

KIX was expected to settle bit by bit over a longer period of time. Instead it settled quite rapidly and then pretty much stopped.

I actually don't really care if they abandon KIX and for that matter all long haul flights out of Kansai. If they had just one airport in Kansai and one major hub airport in Tokyo that would be fine. Fly to Tokyo and then get onto the long haul flight. The current "fly to Haneda, get hauled across the entire fucking city and well into the next prefecture, and then get your international flight" bullshit has to stop. It's fucking ridiculous and it's easy to see why Japanese outside Tokyo use Inchon instead.