Politics hijack Japan’s airline industry
TOKYO - The new $3 billion Kobe airport has been open for just two months, but already there are lines of planes waiting to take off and land.
In the first weeks of operation, air-traffic controllers were forced to order an unusually high number of incoming flights to circle the airport so planes on the ground could get safely in the air. The new airport in Kobe is the third major airport within a 25-mile radius.
The crowded skies over Osaka Bay are a symptom of a wider problem of scattered airports that is turning Japan, once the biggest hub in Asia, into a destination international air travelers increasingly avoid. In a country with so many airports competing with one another, critics ask, just how many airports can Japan sustain?
Japan has 97 airports. And counting. Throughout the last decade of dismal economic growth, municipalities and prefectures continued to cut ribbons on new airports at a breathless pace.
The proliferation of airports has not resulted in lower prices for consumers here. In a country of 126 million highly mobile people, transportation remains expensive — whether by plane, train or automobile.
Japan's problem, analysts say, is that airports have been built to satisfy the desire of local politicians to showcase an airport in their own backyard, without much thought given to integrating Japan's highly efficient rail system with the network of international and domestic flights. They describe it as a perfect illustration of Japan's addiction to massive public works projects.
"Local politics is hijacking good sense," says Anthony Concil, spokesman for the International Air Transport Association.
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