Kansai Airport Is Sinking

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 02-11-02 AT 04:08 PM (GMT)]Interesting article I read
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Anticipating growth due to Osaka’s increasing importance in international trade as well as its fast-growing local economy, the Japanese government decided in the 1960s that the Itami airport would not be sufficient for the future traffic levels of the Osaka region, and in 1968, the Japanese Ministry of Transport started to survey potential locations for a new airport.

Due to a lack of space in the Kansai area due to the high concentration of population on the Eastern Japanese coast, the MOT considered very early in the process to build the airport offshore. The location and the design of the current airport were agreed between the MOT and local authorities of Osaka in July 1982, and the project was eventually approved in December 1985. The construction of the airport seawall began in January 1987 and that of the island starting in May 1989. The seawall and the island were completed in June 1988 and January 1993, respectively. The airport was open on 29 August 1994 to great fanfare, even including an Air France Concorde.

The island, the circle’s arc of 34 kilometers diameter and with 511 hectares area, was designed so that the weight of the facilities would not push the embankment on the sides. The passenger terminal was designed by Renzo Piano – the Italian architect who designed the Beaubourg center in Paris in the 1970s – who was asked to create a facility convenient in the eyes of passengers, but also resistant enough to sustain the rough meteorological and seismic constrains of the bay. The airport has since weathered a typhoon and the earthquake of Kobe (17 January 1995), the biggest since 1923, with only minor damages. Overall, the airport has needed 8 years of work and around €15.25bn investment. One of the most innovative features of its design, the airport rests on some 900 pillars which enable engineers to adjust its height.

But despite all the care, the island has subsided faster than expected; in 1999, it had sunk by over 8 meters, while the initial estimations were for 5.80 meters only. In a half-decade the airport has aged some 44 years ahead of schedule!

It is likely that the airport will cope with these technical problems, but the cost will measure in the billions. And this issue raises another concern; will Kansai airport be able to cope with the estimated passenger and cargo traffic growth over the next decades? For an exporting country like Japan, and especially for the industry of the Osaka region, the airport is an important tool. The airport has only a single runway, while Tokyo’s Narita airport (NRT) recently opened its long-awaited and hotly-debated second runway. With its current design, the airport should reach maximum capacity in 2007.

The primary future projects initially included the construction of two more runways and a second passenger terminal. Any future expansion is uncertain, especially considering the new facilities would be built on an even less stable area and would cost around €13 billion.

Maybe a solution might come from Megafloat, an experimental project constructed in the Tokyo Bay to study the feasibility of building a third airport in the Kanto area around 2010. The principle of Megaflaot is to build an airport “floating” on the sea and supported by heavy pillars rather than by a traditional landfill. The costly trial required a ¥20 billion investment (€226 million).