Tokyo’s Narita International Airport is predicting a 40% increase in passenger throughput in the next ten years. “Narita has seen its number of aircraft movements increase from 135,000 per year to nearly 200,000,” says Kenzo Igarashi, executive advisor to the president at Narita International Airport.
Approximately 60% of all Japan’s international traffic is handled by Narita, and the trend is set to increase, as 40 countries currently have applications to fly to the airport. In 2006-07, it experienced 188,000 aircraft movements and handled 35.3 million passengers and 2.2m tonnes of cargo.
Igarashi says the airport is able to cope with such a high throughput through a number of developments. “Runway B is to be extended in 2010 to accommodate some of the growth in traffic,” he says. “And although we are capped with a 220,000-flight limit through local community agreements, I think they will agree to increase this limit, as it is so important to the economy.”
In what he terms “soft expansion”, Igarashi says that by using software to “balance traffic flow” the airport has been able to service an additional 5m passengers. Additionally, partner airlines have been located into three separate terminal buildings. “We have situated Star Alliance, Sky Team and Oneworld Alliance into different buildings and encouraged airlines to codeshare flight numbers. Alongside sharing resources and making efficiencies for the airlines, this has also increased passenger convenience.”
Asian Aerospace homepage
Source: Flight Daily News
