List of airports in Japan

List of airports in Japan, grouped by classification and sorted by location.

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Categorization

In Japan, airports serving civil aviation routes are governed by the Aeronautical Law for safety purposes, by the Noise Prevention Law for noise prevention purposes and by the Airport Development Law for economic development purposes.Isaku Shibata, "Japanese Laws Related to Airport Development and the Need to Revise Them," "Journal of Air Law and Commerce" vol. 65 (winter 1999), p. 125.] The latter law groups such airports into three legal classifications:

* First class airports "nominally" handle intercontinental flights. There are currently five. Note that, after the completion of Narita and Kansai, Tokyo (Haneda) and Osaka (Itami) stopped handling intercontinental flights. However, the legal classification is still important in some circumstances. For instance, following the ANA flight 61 hijacking in July of 1999, the family of a killed pilot were able to sue the Japanese government for compensation because Haneda was classified as a first class airport.
* Second class airports handle regional and some international flights. There are currently twenty-four.
* Third class airports handle domestic feeder flights. There are currently fifty-six, with two more under construction (New Ishigaki Airport, and Shizuoka Airport). Many third-class airports are small airstrips serving isolated islands of the archipelago.

Under the Airport Development Law, the Ministry of Transport is generally responsible for building and operating first-class airports, while second and third-class airports are partially financed by regional and local governments as well. However, passenger terminals are generally operated by private corporations, and in recent years private corporations have also been formed to manage key airfields such as Narita and Kansai. Moreover, the statutes now provide for commercial service to airfields operated by the Japan Defense Agency.

Some airports in Japan do not fall under the scope of the Japanese airport statutes. These include the three major U.S. military air bases in Japan (Kadena Air Base, MCAS Iwakuni and Yokota Air Base) and smaller aerodromes for firefighting, corporate or other special purposes. In 2001, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, which receives 20% of the public-works construction budget, commenced a scheme to build airfields predominantly for airlifting vegetables. Kasaoka Airfield was one of nine airfields constructed; however it was later determined that flying vegetables to Okayama from Kasaoka took just as long due to loading and unloading, and cost approximately six times as much as road transport.Fact|date=February 2007

List

See also

* Transport in Japan
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References

* [http://www.mlit.go.jp/koku/english/09_data/10_airports.html Civil Aviation Bureau: Airports in Japan] (map with English text)

External links

* Lists of airports in Japan:
** [http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gclookup?Q=country:JP Great Circle Mapper]
** [http://www.fallingrain.com/world/JA/airports.html FallingRain.com]
** [http://www.aircraft-charter-world.com/airports/asia/japan.htm Aircraft Charter World]
** [http://www.the-airport-guide.com/search.php?by=country&search=Japan The Airport Guide]
** [http://www.worldaerodata.com/countries/Japan.php World Aero Data]
** [http://www.azworldairports.com/airports/p1840.htm A-Z World Airports Online]