What to do with all the regional airports

Thursday 02nd July, 05:26 AM JST

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escape_artist at 07:24 PM JST - 2nd July

@The758... How about not putting so much prrority on Narita? Does every filght through Japan have to stop there?

Yeah, if my English so-called newspaper's view of the world is accurate. The one I get seriously calls itself a "Kansai Edition", yet routinely carries full-page ads, articles & whatnot only about Tokyo & Kanto, like a recent fireworks events page only covering Tokyo, and not a word on where to go in Kansai (nestled among 1-2 wasted pages of country-birthday-of-the-day corporate blurbs ..... :-/ ).

I don't think most Diet members really look all that far beyond Tokyo, and their own prefectures. Follow the money (if you can dig up the info) and I'm sure the majority of boondoggles can be traced to their respective Diet representatives, in collusion of course with all the local wannabes who expect favors, etc. in getting to or getting influence from Tokyo themselves. Beyond that I think it's the ol' NIMBY syndrome as far as what most Diet members really care about for the country as a whole.

I agree that the only way these really unnecessary airports will survive is to open them up to smaller & budget airlines. Some airports like Kobe and Kanku are so close to each other that planning & ensuring safety among all the criss-crossing flight paths will certainly be a challenge. Allowing the airports to service more airlines will only make this more complex.

(Farmers markets just ain't gonna cut it. These might attract a few locals who have oodles of time & money to venture the usual farther distances to go shopping, but why on earth would anyone (sane) do that for fresh veggies & fruits when surely there's something closer, and maybe even more fresh? These won't bring in more traveling customers, which is what airports need. Might as well include a flea market with this kind of thinking. As local outreach, they might be good, but they won't pay the ever-larger bills these airports are becoming buried under. When I read that I got images of women & kids selling food items through the train windows in various 3rd-world countries I've traveled in.)
gogogo at 07:48 PM JST - 2nd July

National flights and trains are way way over priced, short hops should be much much cheaper than they currently are.
JeffLee at 10:20 PM JST - 2nd July

Budget domestic airlines are out of the question. They would undercut the Shinkansen, a national prestige project that taxpayers have already poured a trillion yen or so into and has long been a favorite porkbarrel scheme of LDP party.
zaichik at 06:08 AM JST - 3rd July

Budget domestic airlines are out of the question. They would undercut the Shinkansen

Indeed - when Niigata got its shinkansen, its air service to Haneda was pulled completely. It was revived for a couple of months in 2004, after the shinkansen line was damaged in the Chuetsu earthquake, but once the shink returned, the air service disappeared again.
Peaceful_Man at 09:07 AM JST - 3rd July

Check out Saga Airport, It is like a ghost town. Only a couple of flights a day. It iseasier to go to Fukuoka Airport - more flights cheaper. But pride and a big chip on the Saga shoulder coupled with govt subsidies pushed the airoprt - now it is bleeding red ink.
wanderlust at 10:40 AM JST - 3rd July

Was a similar article just a few months ago on Korea's regional airports - 35 out of 38 ( if I remember) were operating 'in the red', with passenger numbers in single/ double figures. As 'escape_artist' wrote, following the money trail between Kasumigaseki and Shizuoka will show whose idea this was and who approved the waste.
terebiko at 11:27 AM JST - 3rd July

I've got it! Open up the airports on weekends to street racers, and charge a minimal fee for viewing. This will make the racers semi-legal, hopefully decrease the amount of racing on actual streets, and provide entertainment. Perhaps develop a national circuit, not only for drifters but bikes too. Give them bosozokus something to do.

Seriously though, the number of local airports is amazing considering the size of the country. In Hiroshima there there are now two airports, the old one very accessible, the new one not. I thought the old one was just fine, just add onto the runway so that it could handle bigger jets, and your set. But no, they had to build a new one in the mountains, which is a problem in the winter and on foggy days. Also takes an hour or so to get to, add that onto an hour or so to get from Haneda to Tokyo and the hour or so flight. It's just easier to take the shinkansen.
escape_artist at 01:19 PM JST - 3rd July

@JeffLee:

Budget domestic airlines are out of the question. They would undercut the Shinkansen...

You may be right, but then the smaller regional airports/boondoggles are essentially doomed unless the farmers markets they envision are really, really big and/or the restaurants they're thinking of adding are really, really attractive & special (and mainly, affordable).

Now forced into survival mode, the owners & investors of these airports need to look outside the box a lot more; maybe there are more viable non-traditional ways the airports can use all the empty/unused space in and surrounding them. If some of these airports fail, as certainly could & probably will happen, what will that do to the regional economies that have slowly grown to depend on them? California and a few other states are now officially bankrupt. Are we going to see local municipalities in Japan headed in the same direction? Tokyo keeps handing out oodles of money like it grows on trees, but that charade can't last forever. When those funds start drying up, as they already have, what will that do to the LDP/Komeito's already slowly ebbing stranglehold on power?

Lots of anguish ahead for lots of people, I think, most of whom had no say whatsoever in deciding to build the airports in the first place.
LIBERTAS at 08:23 PM JST - 3rd July

I refer the readership to Alex Kerr's "Dogs and Demons" (ISBN 0-8090-3943-5) and thumb through to the chapter entitled, "Monuments, Airports for Radishes" and read gleefully about the corrupt stupidity of inflexible construction companies and politicians who are unteachable about wasteful spending on useless white elephants. This airport is one of them. This one, according to the Governor, was to enable strawberry growers in Izu the chance to sell their picked goods on the same day in Shanghai. Truly, it is a case of raspberries to an airport for strawberries!
salarymanblues at 09:28 PM JST - 3rd July

Kobe Airport is another example of a totally useless airport (it is so close to Kansai KIX) that was completely opposed by the local residents but went ahead regardless.
LIBERTAS at 09:32 PM JST - 3rd July

Wanna hear something funny about the three operating airports in Kansai? The joke is that the controllers in Kobe City, Atami and KIX can all SEE each other in the towers using binoculars on a clear day! If you listen to the radio-transmissions (108,000kHz I think) they joke about it! Go figure!
helloklitty at 10:23 PM JST - 3rd July

I refer the readership to Alex Kerr's "Dogs and Demons" (ISBN 0-8090-3943-5) and thumb through to the chapter entitled, "Monuments, Airports for Radishes"

That is a great reference. It points out how politicians like to support flashy projects rather than solve the most difficult problems.
IvanCoughalot at 10:53 PM JST - 3rd July

in exchange for the felling of the stumpage

Really? That passes for English now?
realist at 11:52 PM JST - 4th July

Japan opens yet another "radish" airport, in the middles of nowhere, and it will be mainly used (like 50% of the other ones) for the transportation of Japans vegetables. Whata complete waste of space, time and most of all, our tax money. Japans useless LDP government, srikes again with their heads up their a$$es. This will benefit no-one, and as regards "tourists" using this inaka airport to visit Mt Fuji - since foreign tourists are not welcome here and few come anyway, that idea is a non-starter. What a crazy place.
30061015 at 04:36 AM JST - 5th July

Many local airports do not reveal the extent of their operations, but they should fully disclose them to local residents and solicit their ideas on how to make the airports more financially viable.

That's just it, they aren't financially viable and should never have been built in the first place.

What to do with all the regional airports?

Tear them down, rip them up and make community gardens. Renting out plots planting corn, beans and kabocha would be more profitable and sustainable.