Kansai International Airport (; ), commonly known as Kankū () is the primary international airport in the Greater Osaka Area of Japan and the closest international airport to the cities of Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe. It is located on the artificial island of , in the middle of Osaka Bay off the Honshu shore, southwest of Ōsaka Station, located within three municipalities, including Izumisano (north),Home . Hotel Nikko Kansai Airport. Retrieved on 23 July 2011. "Hotel Nikko Kansai Airport 1, Senshu-kuko Kita, Izumisano-shi, Osaka, 549-0001, Japan " Sennan (south),"OSAKA KANSAI (Kansai International Airport)." JAL Cargo. Retrieved on 23 July 2011. "Departure JAL Export Cargo Bldg. 1 Senshu Airport Minami, Sennan, Osaka Arrival JALKAS Import Cargo Bldg. 1 Senshu Airport Minami, Sennan, Osaka" and Tajiri (central), in Osaka Prefecture. The airport's first airport island covers approximately and the second covers approximately , for a total of .
Kansai opened on 4 September 1994 to relieve overcrowding at Osaka International Airport, also called Itami Airport, which is closer to Osaka. It consists of two terminals: Terminal 1 and Terminal 2. Terminal 1, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, is the longest airport terminal in the world with a length of . The airport serves as an international hub for All Nippon Airways, Japan Airlines, and Nippon Cargo Airlines and as a hub for Peach, the first international low-cost carrier in Japan. It is also the north Pacific hub for FedEx Express, which obtained fifth freedom rights under the 1998 U.S. and Japan air agreement and established the hub in 2014.
In calendar year 2025, 34.1 million passengers used the airport, including 27.5 million on international flights, and freight volume was 786,814 tonnes. In fiscal year 2025, international passenger numbers reached a record 27.08 million, and international passenger flight movements reached a record 142,753. The second runway was opened on 2 August 2007. , Kansai Airport has become an Asian hub, with 780 weekly flights to Asia and Australasia (including 119 freight), 59 weekly flights to Europe and the Middle East (5 freight), and 80 weekly flights to North America (42 freight).Kansai International Airport 2014 summer Flight Schedules – Kansai International Airport Co., Ltd.
In 2020, Kansai was ranked the tenth-best airport in the world by Skytrax and received its awards for Best Airport Staff in Asia, World's Best Airport Staff, and World's Best Airport for Baggage Delivery.
History In the 1960s, when the Kansai region was rapidly losing trade to Tokyo, planners proposed a new airport near Kobe and Osaka. The city's original international airport, Itami Airport, located in the densely populated suburbs of Itami and Toyonaka, was surrounded by buildings; it could not be expanded, and many of its neighbours had filed complaints because of noise pollution problems. Expansion at Itami was also constrained by geography, because the airport was surrounded by mountainous terrain; offshore construction therefore became the practical alternative.
After the protests surrounding New Tokyo International Airport (now Narita International Airport), which was built with expropriated land in a rural part of Chiba Prefecture, planners decided to build the airport offshore. The new airport was part of a number of new developments to revitalize Osaka, which had been losing economic and cultural ground to Tokyo for most of the century.
Initially, the airport was planned to be built near Kobe, but the city of Kobe refused the plan, so the airport was moved to a more southerly location on Osaka Bay. The offshore location allowed 24-hour operation, unlike its predecessor in the city.
Construction
An artificial island, long and wide, was proposed. Engineers needed to overcome the extremely high risks of earthquakes and typhoons (with storm surges of up to ). The water depth is on top of of soft Holocene clay which holds 70% water. A million sand drains were built into the clay to remove water and solidify the clay.
Construction started in 1987. The sea wall was finished in 1989 (made of rock and 48,000 tetrapods). Three mountains were excavated for , and was used to construct island 1. Over three years, 10,000 workers using 80 ships took 10 million man-hours to complete the layer of earth over the sea floor and inside the sea wall. In 1990, a bridge was completed to connect the island to the mainland at Rinku Town, at a cost of $1 billion. Completion of the artificial island increased the area of Osaka Prefecture just enough so that it is no longer the smallest prefecture in Japan (Kagawa Prefecture is now the smallest).
The bidding and construction of the airport was a source of international trade friction during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone responded to American concerns, particularly from Senator Frank Murkowski, that bids would be rigged in Japanese companies' favour by providing special offices for prospective international contractors, which ultimately did little to ease the participation of foreign contractors in the bidding process. Later, foreign airlines complained that two-thirds of the departure hall counter space had been allocated to Japanese carriers, disproportionately to the actual carriage of passengers through the airport.
The island had been predicted to sink by the most optimistic estimate as the weight of the material used for construction compressed the seabed silts. However, by 1999, the island had sunk – almost 50% more than predicted. The project became the most expensive civil works project in modern history after twenty years of planning, three years of construction and US$15bn of investment. Much of what was learned went into the successful artificial islands in silt deposits for New Kitakyushu Airport, Kobe Airport, and Chubu Centrair International Airport. The lessons of Kansai Airport were also applied in the construction of Hong Kong International Airport.
In 1991, the terminal construction commenced. To compensate for the sinking of the island, adjustable columns were designed to support the terminal building. These are extended by inserting thick metal plates at their bases. Government officials proposed reducing the length of the terminal to cut costs, but architect Renzo Piano insisted on keeping the terminal at its full planned length.
The airport's opening date was decided by the Ministry of Transportation in 1993, mainly to avoid confusion among airlines, airports, and travelers during the peak July-August travel season.
The construction of Kansai International Airport received much attention from local newspapers, particularly Osaka editions of major national newspapers, than those of Tokyo.
Just before the airport was opened, the Ministry of Transportation approved the landing fee for its international flights at 2400 yen a tonne.
The airport was opened on 4 September 1994, being the first in Japan to operate 24 hours a day. Over 31 airlines from 26 countries operate at the new airport.
Within two weeks after its opening, the airport was reported to have had a "poor start": travel agencies in Tokyo were not interested in using the airport for their packages as the number of international flights was fewer than at Narita; one member of a travel agency said that the airport had no major advantage over the one in Narita and another said that the airport being "no better than a local airport". The airport also had problems with flight timetables.
On 17 January 1995, Japan was struck by the Great Hanshin earthquake, the epicenter of which was about away from KIX and killed 6,434 people on Japan's main island of Honshū. Its earthquake engineering, particularly the use of sliding joints, allowed the airport to emerge unscathed. Even the glass in the windows remained intact. On 22 September 1998, the airport survived a typhoon with wind speeds over .
On 19 April 2001, the airport was one of ten structures given the "Civil Engineering Monument of the Millennium" award by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
, the total cost of Kansai Airport was $20 billion including land reclamation, two runways, terminals, and facilities. Most additional costs were initially due to the island's sinking, caused by the soft soils of Osaka Bay, which was anticipated by designers. The sink rate fell from per year during 1994 to per year in 2008.
Operation
Opened on 4 September 1994, the airport serves as a hub for several airlines such as All Nippon Airways, Japan Airlines, and Nippon Cargo Airlines. It is the international gateway for Japan's Kansai region, which contains the major cities of Kyoto, Kobe, and Osaka. Other Kansai domestic flights fly from the older but more conveniently located Osaka International Airport in Itami, or from the newer Kobe Airport.
The airport had been deeply in debt, losing $560 million in interest every year. Airlines had been kept away by high landing fees (about $7,500 for a Boeing 747), the second most expensive in the world after Narita's. In the early years of the airport's operation, excessive terminal rent and utility bills for on-site concessions also drove up operating costs: some estimates before opening held that a cup of coffee would have to cost US$10. Osaka business owners pressed the government to take a greater burden of the construction cost to keep the airport attractive to passengers and airlines.
On 17 February 2005, Chubu Centrair International Airport opened in Nagoya, east of Osaka. The opening of the airport was expected to increase competition between Japan's international airports. Despite this, passenger totals were up 11% in 2005 over 2004, and international passengers increased to 3.06 million in 2006, up 10% over 2005. Adding to the competition were the opening of Kobe Airport, less than away, in 2006 and the lengthening of the runway at Tokushima Airport in Shikoku in 2007. The main rationale behind the expansions was to compete with Incheon International Airport and Hong Kong International Airport as a gateway to Asia, as Tokyo area airports were severely congested. Kansai saw a 5% year-on-year increase in international traffic in summer 2013, largely supported by low-cost carrier traffic to Taiwan and Southeast Asia overcoming a decrease in traffic to China and South Korea.
The airport authority was allotted four billion yen in government support for fiscal year 2013, and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport and the Ministry of Finance agreed to reduce this amount in stages through fiscal year 2015, although local governments in the Kansai region have pressed for continued subsidies.
Kansai has been marketed as an alternative to Narita Airport for international travelers from the Greater Tokyo Area. By flying to Kansai from Haneda Airport and connecting to international flights there, travelers can save the additional time required to get to Narita: up to one and a half hours for many residents of Kanagawa Prefecture and southern Tokyo.
Expansion
The airport was at its limit during peak times, owing especially to freight flights, so a portion of Phase II expansion—the second runway—was made a priority. Thus, in 2002, believing that the sinking problem was almost over, the airport operators started to construct a second runway and terminal.
The second runway opened on 2 August 2007, but with the originally planned terminal portion postponed. This lowered the project cost to JPY¥910 billion (approx. US$8 billion), saving ¥650 billion from the first estimate. The additional runway development, which was opened in time for the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Osaka, has expanded the airport size to . The second runway is used for landings and when there are incidents prohibiting takeoff from runway A. The new runway allowed the airport to start 24-hour operations in September 2007.