Kansai Airport
Kansai Airport |
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|---|---|
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| Characteristics | |
| ICAO code | RJBB |
| IATA code | KIX |
| Coordinates | |
| Height above MSL | 5 m (16 ft ) |
| Transport links | |
| Distance from the city center | 40 km southwest of Osaka |
| train | Kansai Airport Express (Haruka) |
| Local transport | Airport bus connections |
| Basic data | |
| opening | 4th September 1994 |
| operator | Kansai Airports |
| surface | 1055 ha |
| Terminals | 2 |
| Passengers | 16,582,027 (2006) |
| Air freight | 842,085 t (2006) |
| Flight movements |
114,559 (2006) |
| Runways | |
| 06R / 24L | 3500 m × 61 m asphalt |
| 06L / 24R | 4000 m × 61 m asphalt |
The Kansai International Airport ( Japanese 関 西 国際 空港 Kansai Kokusai Kūkō , English Kansai International Airport , 関 空 Kankū for short ) is a Japanese airport in Izumisano ( Kinki region ) in Japan . It is located in Osaka Prefecture , five kilometers from the coast on an artificial island in the sea. It serves the Kansai metropolitan area around the largest city of Osaka mainly with international flights. In 2014 around 20 million passengers were counted.
Kansai Airport was designed as a 24-hour airport with two runways, but due to the economic downturn after the bubble economy , capacity utilization remained below profitability even in the twelfth year of operation. The airport has so far hardly been able to implement the ambitious plan of an aviation hub in East Asia in competition with Incheon Airport in Seoul .
The second section of the reclamation with a second runway was only completed in August 2007 in a scaled-down form, initially without a terminal. Since 2006, Kansai Airport has grown with the new Kobe Airport, in addition to Osaka-Itami Airport , another competitor for domestic traffic until the three airports merged in April 2018 and henceforth operated by the joint operator "Kansai Airports" ( 関 西 エ ア ポ ー ト , Kansai Eapōto ) to get managed.
The curved terminal building along the runway was designed by Renzo Piano .
Administratively, the airport island is divided into three parts: Izumisano (northern part), Tajiri (central part) and Sennan (southern part).
history
The airport planned by the architect Renzo Piano was opened on September 4, 1994 . The airport island is around 4 km long and 1.2 km wide and was filled with 430 million m³ of clay . The building cost around 20 billion $ .
Kansai Airport survived its first acid test in the great Hanshin earthquake in 1995 without any problems.
The airport is currently (2007) sinking 4.8 cm per year into the sea. However, the decline should slow down and finally stop over the next few years. The designers have developed sophisticated correction systems to keep the runways and buildings completely level and at the same height. The fuel connection pipes adapt elastically to different heights.
Japan's first dedicated terminal exclusively for low-cost airlines opened on October 28, 2012. The new facility at Kansai Airport serves, among other things, as a base for Peach Aviation . The new terminal can handle 4 million passengers a year.
The bridge to the “mainland” was damaged on September 4, 2018 when the tanker Hōun Maru ( 宝 運 丸 ) was killed by typhoon “Jebi” (typhoon no. 21 of 2018), which claimed 14 lives across Japan (8 of them in the Osaka Prefecture), drifted from its anchorage and collided with the bridge. There were no injuries among the 11 crew members of the tanker. The airport was closed due to flooding during the storm. The collision also interrupted the road and rail links at the airport, which were cut off from the outside world along with the 3,000 travelers in the airport. The travelers were transported to the mainland by ferries on September 5, 2018, as air traffic could only partially resume on September 7.
Transport links
The airport is connected to the island of Honshū , which is part of the heartland of Japan, by a two-story bridge for rail and car traffic.
Train (JR, Nankai)
- Tennōji , Osaka: 30 minutes, 1770 yen ( JR special express); 45 minutes (JR)
- Kyoto : 75 minutes (JR)
- Namba , Osaka: 30 minutes, 1390 yen ( Nankai special express); 42 minutes (Nankai)
buses
- Umeda , Osaka: 55 minutes
- Kyoto: 100 minutes
- Kobe : 65 minutes
- Nara : 85 minutes
- Osaka-Itami Airport : 70 minutes
Airlines and Destinations
| airline | Destinations |
|---|---|
| Air France | Paris – Charles de Gaulle |
| British Airways | London – Heathrow |
| Emirates | Dubai |
| KLM | Amsterdam |
| Lufthansa | Munich |
| Swiss International Air Lines | Zurich |
Web links
- kansai-airport.or.jp Official Homepage
- japan-photo.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Airports Council International ( Memento from February 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Airport homepage archive link ( Memento from August 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ kansai-airport.com - About us , accessed September 12, 2018
- ↑ ASCE : ascelibrary.org - Settlement of the Kansai International Airport Islands (English), accessed on September 12, 2018
- ↑ ESA : earth.esa.int - 20 Years of SAR , accessed on September 12, 2018
- ↑ Earthquake In Japan: Stricter rules proved their worth. The Independent , January 20, 1995, accessed September 12, 2018 .
- ↑ Flightglobal, October 29, 2012
- ↑ 平 成 ３０ 年 台風 第 ２１ 号 に よ る 被害 及 び 消防 機関 等 の 対 応 状況 （第 8 報 H30.10.2） ( Memento from October 3, 2018 on WebCite ) , 総 務 省 消防 庁 (Fire and Disaster Management Agency), 8. Damage report, October 2, 2018.
- ↑ a b c Ship smashes into Kansai airport bridge as typhoon hits Japan. (No longer available online.) In: Mainichi Shimbun . September 4, 2018, archived from the original on September 4, 2018 ; accessed on September 4, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c Powerful typhoon leaves 9 dead in Japan . NHK . September 4, 2018. Retrieved September 4, 2018.
- ↑ Domestic flights at Kansai airport to resume Fri. after typhoon. Mainichi Shimbun , September 6, 2018, accessed September 12, 2018 .
- ↑ SWISS is now flying to Osaka | SWISS. Retrieved August 29, 2019 .
