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Ibaraki Airport was conceived originally as a domestic airport but its profile is changing |
JAPAN. South Korea’s Asiana Airlines has confirmed it will operate a daily round-trip service between Incheon International Airport and Ibaraki Airport when the new Tokyo area airport launches operations in March 2010.
In positioning itself for low-cost carrier (LCC) services, Ibaraki Airport is applying lessons learned from the LCC Terminal at Kuala Lumpur Airport, the Budget Terminal at Singapore’s Changi Airport, and Queensland’s Gold Coast Airport.
“At present we are talking with some other airlines but we cannot disclose details as yet”, Katsuichi Yabunaka, Director of Ibaraki Prefectural Government’s Airport Promotion Division, told The Moodie Report.
Under construction at the Air Self-Defense Force’s Hyakuri Air Base, Ibaraki Airport will be for joint civil-military use. It will become the third airport in the Tokyo metropolitan area, with a passenger capacity of 15 million.
“Within the building a restaurant, a souvenir shop, a rental car office and a home-delivery office will also open in March 2010,” said Yabunaka.
“More space is available for rent for further restaurants and shops,” he added. “But no decisions or floor allocations have been made as yet in regard to duty free shops.”
Asiana expects to carry around 28,000 passengers a year between Incheon and Ibaraki airports. If demand is adequate, the airline has stated it will also consider operating three round-trip flights per week between Gimhae International Airport in Busan and Ibaraki.
About Ibaraki Airport
Ibaraki Airport was conceived mainly as a domestic airport, serving as Tokyo’s northern gateway to destinations such as Sapporo, Osaka, Fukuoka and Okinawa.
Japanese domestic airlines have been reluctant to offer flights from the airport, preferring to allocate resources to Narita and Haneda airports, which benefit from faster train and bus links. Ibaraki Airport is situated 90 minutes drive from Tokyo.
To counter this Yabunaka remarked that a parking lot for 1,300 cars will also open in March 2010, and that passengers will be able to park for free.
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The airport serves as Tokyo’s northern gateway to destinations such as Sapporo, Osaka, Fukuoka and Okinawa |
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