Japan Airport Terminal

Before the construction of Haneda Airport, Tachikawa Airfield was Tokyo's primary airport. It was the main operating base of Japan Air Transport, then the country's flag carrier. But as it was a military base and 35 kilometres 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 53-hectare portion of reclaimed land from a private individual in order to construct an airport.

Empire/war era

Haneda Airfield first opened in 1931 on a small piece of reclaimed land at the west end of today's airport complex. A 300-metre 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 Dalian.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 Hsinking. 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 800 metres in length and a second 800-metre runway was completed. The airport's size grew to 72.8 hectares using land purchased by the postal ministry from a nearby exercise ground.During World War II, both 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 251 hectares , 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 for completion in 1941, but 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.

U.S. occupation

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 in order to make room for various construction projects, including extending one runway to 1,650 metres and the other to 2,100 metres . On the 21st, over 3,000 residents received orders to leave their homes within 48 hours. Many 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 257.4 hectares . 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 stop-over for C-54 transport planes departing San Francisco, en route to the Far East and returning flights. A number of 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.

International era

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. TYO: 9706 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 three, KLM three, SAS five, Swissair two and BOAC 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. During 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 1970 also required various facility improvements at Haneda, including repurposing the original runway 15R/33L as an airport apron. 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.

Domestic era

While most international flights moved from Haneda to Narita in 1978, airlines based in the Republic of China on Taiwan continued to use Haneda Airport for many years due to the ongoing political conflict between the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China . China Airlines served Taipei and Honolulu from Haneda; Taiwan's second major airline, EVA Air, joined CAL at Haneda in 1999. All Taiwan flights were moved to Narita in 2002, and Haneda-Honolulu services ceased. In 2003, JAL, ANA, Korean Air and Asiana began service to Gimpo Airport in Seoul, providing a "scheduled charter" city-to-city service.

The Transport Ministry released an expansion plan for Haneda in 1983 under which it would be expanded onto new landfill in Tokyo Bay with the aim of increasing capacity, reducing noise and making use of the large amount of garbage generated by Tokyo. In July 1988, a new 3,000-metre runway opened on the landfill. In September 1993, the old airport terminal was replaced by a new West Passenger Terminal, nicknamed "Big Bird", which was built farther out on the landfill. New C and B runways were completed in March 1997 and March 2000 respectively. In 2004, Terminal 2 opened at Haneda for ANA and Air Do; the 1993 terminal, now known as Terminal 1, became the base for JAL, Skymark and Skynet Asia Airways.In October 2006, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao reached an informal agreement to launch bilateral talks regarding an additional city-to-city service between Haneda and Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport. On 25 June 2007, the two governments concluded an agreement allowing for the Haneda-Hongqiao service to commence from October 2007.In December 2007, Japan and the People's Republic of China reached a basic agreement on opening charter services between Haneda and Beijing Nanyuan Airport. However, because of difficulties in negotiating with the Chinese military operators of Nanyuan, the first charter flights in August 2008 used Beijing Capital International Airport instead, as did subsequent scheduled charters to Beijing.In June 2007, Haneda gained the right to host international flights that depart between 8:30 pm and 11:00 pm and arrive between 6 am and 8:30 am. The airport allows departures and arrivals between 11 pm and 6 am, as Narita Airport is closed during these hours.Macquarie Bank and Macquarie Airports owned a 19.9% stake in Japan Airport Terminal until 2009, when they sold their stake back to the company.

Expansion of international service

A third terminal for international flights was completed in October 2010. The cost to construct the five-story terminal building and attached 2,300-car parking deck was covered by a private finance initiative process, revenues from duty-free concessions and a facility use charge of ¥2,000 per passenger. Both the Tokyo Monorail and the Keiky? Airport Line added stops at the new terminal, and an international air cargo facility was constructed nearby. The fourth runway , which is called D Runway, was also completed in 2010, having been constructed via land reclamation to the south of the existing airfield. This runway was designed to increase Haneda's operational capacity from 285,000 movements to 407,000 movements per year, permitting increased frequencies on existing routes, as well as routes to new destinations. In particular, Haneda would offer additional slots to handle 60,000 overseas flights a year .In May 2008, the Japanese Ministry of Transport announced that international flights would be allowed between Haneda and any overseas destination, provided that such flights must operate between 11 pm and 7 am. The Ministry of Transport originally planned to allocate a number of the newly available landing slots to international flights of 1,947 kilometres or less .

30,000 annual international slots became available upon the opening of the International Terminal, current Terminal 3, in October 2010 and were allocated to government authorities in several countries for further allocation to airlines. While service to Seoul, Taipei, Shanghai and other regional destinations continued to be allowed during the day, long-haul services were initially limited to overnight hours. Many long-haul services from Haneda struggled, such as British Airways service to London and Air Canada service to Vancouver . Delta Air Lines replaced its initial service to Detroit with service to Seattle before cancelling the service entirely in favor for the daytime services to Los Angeles and Minneapolis . In October 2013, American Airlines announced the cancellation of its service between Haneda and New York JFK stating that it was "quite unprofitable" owing to the schedule constraints at Haneda.

Haneda Airport's new International Terminal has received numerous complaints from passengers using it during night hours. One of the complaints is the lack of amenities available in the building as most restaurants and shops are closed at night. Another complaint is that there is no affordable public transportation at night operating out of the terminals. The Keikyu Airport Line, Tokyo Monorail and most bus operators stop running services out of Haneda by midnight, and so passengers landing at night are forced to go by car or taxi to their destination. A Haneda spokesperson said that they would work with transportation operators and the government to improve the situation.Daytime international slots were allocated in October 2013. In the allocation among Japanese carriers, All Nippon Airways argued that it should receive more international slots than Japan Airlines due to JAL's recent government-supported bankruptcy restructuring, and ultimately won 11 daily slots to JAL's five. Nine more daytime slot pairs were allocated for service to the United States in February 2016. They were intended to be allocated along with the other daytime slots, but allocation talks were stalled in 2014, leading the Japanese government to release these slots for charter services to other countries meanwhile. The new daytime slots led to increased flight capacity between Tokyo and many Asian markets, but did not have a major effect on capacity between Japan and Europe, as several carriers simply transferred flights from Narita to Haneda . In an effort to combat this effect, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport gave non-binding guidance to airlines that any new route at Haneda should not lead to the discontinuation of a route at Narita, although it was possible for airlines to meet this requirement through cooperation with a code sharing partner .An expansion of the new international terminal was completed at the end of March 2014. The expansion includes a new 8-gate pier to the northwest of the existing terminal, an expansion of the adjacent apron with four new aircraft parking spots, a hotel inside the international terminal, and expanded check-in, customs/immigration/quarantine and baggage claim areas.In addition to its international slot restrictions, Haneda remains subject to domestic slot restrictions; domestic slots are reallocated by MLIT every five years, and each slot is valued at 2–3 billion yen in annual income.

Future expansion plans

Following Tokyo's winning bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics, the Japanese government plans to increase the combined slot capacity of Haneda and Narita, and to construct a new railway line linking from Haneda Airport to Tokyo Station in approximately 18 minutes.JR East has considered extending an existing freight line from Tamachi Station on the Yamanote Line to create a third rail link to the airport, which may potentially be connected to the Ueno–Tokyo Line to offer a through connection to Ueno and points on the Utsunomiya Line and Takasaki Line. Although there had been discussion of completing this extension prior to the 2020 Olympics, the plan was indefinitely shelved in 2015.The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is planning a new road tunnel between the domestic and international terminals in order to shorten minimum connecting times between the terminals from the current 60–80 minutes.Haneda suffers from airspace restrictions due to its position between Yokota Air Base to the west and Narita International Airport to the east. Due to these airfields' requirements and noise concerns, Haneda flights generally arrive and depart using circular routes over Tokyo Bay. A new arrival corridor over western Tokyo and a new departure corridor over Yokohama, Kawasaki and central Tokyo, which is limited to afternoon hours, was added on 29 March 2020. Additional taxiways must be constructed in order for Haneda to handle more flights, and construction is expected to take around three years.