Japan inaugurates ultra-modern International Kansai airport
Japan inaugurates ultra-modern International Kansai airport
TOKYO (AFP): It has been an engineer's nightmare and a magnet
for terrorist wrath, but today, Japan inaugurates its
International Kansai airport, a mammoth project on the sea near
Osaka designed to become the main gateway to Asia.
The airport, which took eight years to complete, will be the
most expensive in the world to use. It has been built on an
artificial island in Osaka Bay, five kilometers from Japan's
third-largest city.
The task of throwing 150 million cubic meters of earth into
the 18-meter-deep ocean and then stabilizing the reclaimed land
while work was continuing on the surface proved to be an
engineer's nightmare.
The problems delayed the opening of the airport by 18 months,
and increased the cost by 50 percent. As well, Japanese leftists
have protested against the new airport. There have already been
20 terrorist attacks on the airport site.
The final cost of the new international airport is in the
region of 1,500 billion yen (US$15 billion), three times the cost
of Tokyo's Narita airport finished in 1978.
The airport is linked to Osaka by a four-kilometer bridge and
a fast ferry service, and is in the heart of Kansai, Japan's
second-biggest economic region, with a gross national product
equal to that of Canada.
The airport is also designed to handle millions of travelers
from the Tokyo area, to ease the congestion at Narita.
Due to the heavy traffic it can take four hours to get from
the center of Tokyo to Narita.
When it opens next month, the new airport will run 24 hours a
day.
An air shuttle service will take passengers to the domestic
Haneda airport, thirty minutes from central Tokyo.
Kansai airport will be able to handle more than 30 million
passengers and 1.4 million tons of freight per year, with up to
454 flights in and out possible each day.
Critics
Situated close to the Siberian air corridor along which
travelers from Europe travel, and en route for trans-Pacific
travelers, Osaka could become an air hub for Asia.
However even before it has opened, the airport has had its
critics. Landing fees have been labeled exorbitant by airlines,
while others consider the new airport too little too late given
the phenomenal increase in worldwide air traffic.
The new airport, like Narita, has a single runway. According
to some studies it could be saturated within ten years if, as
some predict, 50 percent of all air travel next century is
concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region.
A second and third runway could be built on the enlarged
island.
Landing taxes are nearly four times as high as those in Hong
Kong, Singapore and Auckland. A total of 317 weekly flights by 26
airlines from 20 countries have been confirmed for the airport's
opening. This is just half the original target for weekly flights
upon inauguration.
Japan's new airport will also face tough regional competition
from other newcomers. Before the end of the decade, new airports
will be opened in Hong Kong, Seoul, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.