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DATE: October 14, 2022
LOCATION: Chubu Centrair International Airport, Tokoname City, Aichi Prefecture, Japan
GOOGLE MAP: https://goo.gl/maps/WgwdPfEQc9S3yMu87
Chubu Centrair International Airport (中部国際空港, Chūbu Kokusai Kūkō) (IATA: NGO, ICAO: RJGG) is an international airport on an artificial island in Ise Bay, Tokoname City in Aichi Prefecture, 35 km (22 mi) south of Nagoya in central Japan.
Centrair is classified as a first-class airport and is the main international gateway for the Chubu (“central”) region of Japan. The name “Centrair” (セントレア, Sentorea) is an abbreviation of Central Japan International Airport, an alternate translation used in the English name of the airport’s operating company, Central Japan International Airport Co., Ltd. (中部国際空港株式会社, Chūbu Kokusai Kūkō Kabushiki-gaisha). 10.2 million people used the airport in 2015, ranking 8th busiest in the nation, and 208,000 tons of cargo was moved in 2015.
Chubu Centrair serves the third largest metropolitan area in Japan, centered around the city of Nagoya. The region is a major manufacturing canter, with the headquarters and production facilities of Toyota Motor Corporation and production facilities for Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation.
With much lobbying by local business groups such as Toyota, especially for 24-hour cargo flights, construction started August 2000, with a budget of JPY¥768 billion (€5.5 billion, US$7.3 billion), but through efficient management nearly ¥100 billion was saved. Penta-Ocean Construction was a major contractor.
According to Japanese media sources, Kodo-kai, a Yakuza faction in the Yamaguchi-gumi group, earned an immense amount of money by being the sole supplier, via a front company called Samix, of dirt, rock, sand, and gravel for the airport construction project. Although several Samix executives were criminally indicted for racketeering, the prosecutions were later dropped. According to the sources, Kodo-kai had informants working within the Nagoya police who fed the organization inside information which allowed them to stay a step ahead of investigating authorities.
When Chubu Centrair opened on 17 February 2005, it took over almost all of the existing Nagoya Airport’s (now Nagoya Airfield) commercial flights, and relieved Tokyo and Kansai areas of cargo shipments. As a replacement for Nagoya Airport, it also inherited its IATA airport code NGO. The airport opened in time to service the influx of visitors for Expo 2005, located near Nagoya. The airport is speculated to have some competition with Shizuoka Airport, which opened on 4 June 2009.
An exposition center inside the airport island was opened on August 30, 2019. The exposition center has 6 exhibition halls each being 10,000 m2. Events held at the venue include the 2019 edition of the Wired Music Festival on September 7 and 8.
Main hall of arrival, at the conjuncture of the “T”-shaped building
The northern side of the terminal holds domestic flights, while the southern side holds international flights, each with dedicated ticket counters, security checkpoints and baggage carousels, and for international flights, immigration and customs facilities. Arrivals are processed on the second floor, and departures on the third. The lower level is used for maintenance, catering, and other ground operations, as well as for passenger buses to hardstands in the middle of the airport ramp. There are thirteen gates for domestic flights (including three bus gates), and fourteen for international flights (including three bus gates). Terminal 2 is a domestic and international terminal for budget airlines, with 11 gates for international flights and 9 gates for domestic flights.