Haneda Airport
Haneda Airport, officially Tokyo International Airport and sometimes abbreviated to Tokyo-Haneda, is a Japanese international airport, the busier of the two serving the Greater Tokyo Area, the other being Narita International Airport. It serves as the primary domestic base of Japan's two largest airlines, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways, as well as RegionalPlus Wings Corp., Skymark Airlines, and StarFlyer. It is located in Ōta, Tokyo, south of Tokyo Station. The facility covers 1,522 hectares of land.
Haneda previously carried the IATA airport code TYO, which is now used by airline reservation systems and travel agencies within the Greater Tokyo Area, and was the primary international airport serving Tokyo until 1978; from 1978 to 2010, Haneda handled almost all domestic flights to and from Tokyo as well as "scheduled charter" flights to a small number of major cities in East and Southeast Asia, while Narita handled the vast majority of international flights from further locations. In 2010, a dedicated international terminal, currently Terminal 3, was opened at Haneda in conjunction with the completion of a fourth runway, allowing long-haul flights to operate during nighttime. Haneda opened up to long-haul service during the daytime in March 2014, with carriers offering nonstop service to 25 cities in 17 countries. Since the resuming of international flights, airlines in Japan strategize Haneda as "Hub of Japan": providing connections between intercontinental flights with Japanese domestic flights, while envisioning Narita as the "Hub of Asia" between intercontinental destinations with Asian destinations.
The Japanese government encourages the use of Haneda for premium business routes and Narita for leisure routes and by low-cost carriers. However, the major full-service carriers may have a choice to fly to both airports. Haneda handled 87,098,683 passengers in 2018; by passenger throughput, it was the third-busiest airport in Asia and the fourth-busiest in the world. It returned to the second-busiest airport in Asia after Dubai International Airport in 2023 in the Airports Council International rankings. It can handle 90 million passengers per year following its expansion in 2018. With Haneda and Narita combined, Tokyo has the third-busiest city airport system in the world, after London and New York.
In 2020, Haneda was named the second-best airport after Singapore's Changi Airport and the World's Best Domestic Airport. It maintained its second place in Skytrax’s world's top 100 airports for 2021 and 2022, in-between Qatar's Hamad International Airport and Singapore's Changi Airport, and maintaining its best Domestic Airport title from the previous year.
History
Before the construction of Haneda, the area was a prosperous resort centered around Anamori Inari Shrine, and Tokyo's primary airport was Tachikawa Airfield. It was the main operating base of Japan Air Transport, then the country's flag carrier. But as it was a military base and away from central Tokyo, aviators in Tokyo used various beaches of Tokyo Bay as airstrips, including beaches near the current site of Haneda. In 1930, the Japanese postal ministry purchased a portion of reclaimed land from a private individual to construct an airport.Empire era (1931–1945)
Haneda Airfield first opened in 1931 on a small piece of reclaimed land at the west end of today's airport complex. A concrete runway, a small airport terminal, and 2 hangars were constructed. The first flight from the airport on August 25, 1931, carried a load of insects to Dairen in the Kwantung Leased Territory.During the 1930s, Haneda handled flights to destinations in Japan mainland, Taiwan, Korea and Manchuria. The major Japanese newspapers also built their first flight departments at Haneda during this time, and Manchukuo National Airways began service between Haneda and Hsingking, the capital of Manchukuo. JAT was renamed Imperial Japanese Airways following its nationalization in 1938. Passenger and freight traffic grew dramatically in these early years. In 1939, Haneda's first runway was extended to in length, and a second runway was completed. The airport's size grew to using land purchased by the postal ministry from a nearby exercise ground.
During World War II, both the IJA and Haneda Airport shifted to almost exclusively military transport services. Haneda Airport was also used by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service for flight training during the war.
In the late 1930s, the Tokyo government planned a new Tokyo Municipal Airport on an artificial island in Koto Ward. At, the airport would have been five times the size of Haneda at the time, and significantly larger than Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, which was said to be the largest airport in the world at the time. The airport plan was finalized in 1938, and work on the island began in 1939, with completion scheduled for 1941. However, the project fell behind schedule due to resource constraints during World War II. This plan was officially abandoned following the war, as the Allied occupation authorities favored expanding Haneda rather than building a new airport; the island was later expanded by dumping garbage into the bay, and is now known as Yumenoshima.
Occupation era (1945–1952)
On September 12, 1945, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers and head of the Occupation of Japan following World War II, ordered that Haneda be handed over to the occupation forces. On the following day, he took delivery of the airport, which was renamed Haneda Army Air Base, and ordered the eviction of many nearby residents to make room for various construction projects, including extending one runway to and the other to. On the 21st, Anamori Inari Shrine and over 3,000 residents received orders to leave their homes within 48 hours. Many were resettled on the other side of a river in the Haneda district of Ota, surrounding Anamoriinari Station, and some still live in the area today. The expansion work commenced in October 1945 and was completed in June 1946, at which point the airport covered. Haneda AAF was designated as a port of entry to Japan.Haneda was mainly a military and civilian transportation base used by the U.S. Army and Air Force as a stopover for C-54 transport planes departing San Francisco, en route to the Far East and returning flights. Several C-54s, based at Haneda AFB, participated in the Berlin Blockade airlift. These planes were specially outfitted for hauling coal to German civilians. Many of these planes were decommissioned after their participation due to coal dust contamination. Several US Army or Air Force generals regularly parked their personal planes at Haneda while visiting Tokyo, including General Ennis Whitehead. During the Korean War, Haneda was the main regional base for United States Navy flight nurses, who evacuated patients from Korea to Haneda for treatment at military hospitals in Tokyo and Yokosuka. US military personnel based at Haneda were generally housed at the Washington Heights residential complex in central Tokyo.
Haneda Air Force Base received its first international passenger flights in 1947 when Northwest Orient Airlines began DC-4 flights across the North Pacific to the United States, and within Asia to China, South Korea, and the Philippines. Pan American World Airways made Haneda a stop on its "round the world" route later in 1947, with westbound DC-4 service to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Kolkata, Karachi, Damascus, Istanbul, London and New York, and eastbound Constellation service to Wake Island, Honolulu and San Francisco.
The U.S. military gave part of the base back to Japan in 1952; this portion became known as Tokyo International Airport. The US military maintained a base at Haneda until 1958, when the remainder of the property was returned to the Japanese government.
First international era (1952–1978)
Japan's flag carrier Japan Airlines began its first domestic operations from Haneda in 1951. For a few postwar years, Tokyo International Airport did not have a passenger terminal building. The Japan Airport Terminal Co., Ltd. was founded in 1953 to develop the first passenger terminal, which opened in 1955. An extension for international flights opened in 1963. European carriers began service to Haneda in the 1950s. Air France arrived at Haneda for the first time in November 1952. BOAC de Havilland Comet flights to London via the southern route began in 1953, and SAS DC-7 flights to Copenhagen via Anchorage began in 1957. JAL and Aeroflot began cooperative service from Haneda to Moscow in 1967. Pan Am and Northwest Orient used Haneda as a hub. The August 1957 Official Airline Guide shows 86 domestic and 8 international departures each week on Japan Air Lines. Other international departures per week: seven Civil Air Transport, three Thai DC4s, 2 Hong Kong Airways Viscounts, two Air India, and one QANTAS. Northwest had 16 departures a week, Pan Am had 12, and Canadian Pacific had four; Air France had three, KLM had three, SAS had five, Swissair had two, and BOAC had three. As of 1966, the airport had three runways: 15L/33R, 15R/33L and 4/22.The Tokyo Monorail opened between Haneda and central Tokyo in 1964, in time for the Tokyo Olympics. In 1964, Japan lifted travel restrictions on its citizens, causing passenger traffic at the airport to swell. The introduction of jet aircraft in the 1960s, followed by the Boeing 747 in 197,0 also required various facility improvements at Haneda, including extending Runway 4/22 over the water and repurposing part of Runway 15R/33L as an airport apron. A new international arrivals facility opened in June 1970.
Around 1961, the government began considering further expansion of Haneda with a third runway and additional apron space, but forecast that the expansion would only meet capacity requirements for about ten years following completion. In 1966, the government decided to build a new airport for international flights. In 1978, Narita Airport opened, taking over almost all international service in the Greater Tokyo Area, and Haneda became a domestic airport.