Airline

April 2002

Narita Airport marked the second opening with an opening ceremony for its new 2,180-meter runway. The opening of the second runway comes 24 years after the 1978 opening of Narita airport and 36 years after a Cabinet decision to build the airport. The original plan had been to make the second runway, which runs parallel to the 4000-meter main strip, 2500 meters long, but fierce opposition from the local farmers and their backers forced the airport operator, the New Tokyo International airport Authority, to cut it to 2,180 meters. The second runway has therefore been referred to as a provisional runway, and their airport authority plans to eventually extend it to 2,500 meters by persuading anti-airport landowners to sell their land. The airport authority gave the go-ahead to shortening the runway so it could go into use ahead of the World cup soccer finals to be co-hosted by Japan and south Korea, starting May 31. Thanks to the completion of the provisional second strip, the airport's total number of departures and arrivals will be increased to 200,000 a year from the current 135,000. The number of airlines serving Narita airport will be raised to 67 from the current 54. The new runway will officially open catering to domestic and short-haul overseas flights on Asian and Pacific routes. (April 18, the Daily Yomiuri, the Yomiuri Shimbun, Kyodo News)

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport plans to give preferential treatment to smaller airlines in allotting landing and departure slots at the Tokyo International Airport at Haneda, when it reviews allotments in 2005. The move is aimed at preventing major firms, namely Japan Airlines Co. and Japan Air System Co., which intend to integrate operations, and All Nippon Airways Co. from further consolidating their hold on flight services and thereby stifling competition. Although the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) had earlier opposed the merger of JAL and JAS. it will likely approve the plan now that the two firms have offered to give up 10 flights at Haneda. The Commission is calling on the ministry to take action to help more new companies enter the business. At Haneda, ANA operates 158 flights a day, JAL and JAS a total of 189, while Skymark Airlines Co. and Hokkaido International Airlines Co. (Air Do) offer six flights each. While there are slots for nine more flights, that number could easily fill up because two companies are due to begin service at the airport beginning this summer and next spring. The ministry intends to improve operations at the control tower to offer slots for 14 more flights per day and will also call on ANA to give up some of its slots. The ministry plans to review slot allotment at Haneda once every three years after 2005. (April 13, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun)

The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) is close to giving the green light to the business integration planned by Japan Airlines Co. and Japan Air System Co. The antitrust watchdog is expected to make a formal decision by the end of April. Both airlines presented a series of modifications to their integration plans after the FTC, arguing that the move would hamper fair competition, balked at approving the deal. The commission praised the fact that the airlines agreed to give up a combined 10 or so landing and takeoff slots allocated to them at Tokyo International Airport at Haneda. The FTC and the two companies are still negotiating the details of this plan. They also agreed to allow new entrants to the industry use their facilities at airports, such as check-in counters and boarding gates. JAL and JAS also agreed to bolster their efforts to handle more maintenance work for new entrants. The FTC announced March 15 that the JAL-JAS integration plan could violate the Anti-Monopoly Law. The two carriers have been negotiating with the commission since they submitted a revised plan at the end of March.(April 11, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun)

An airplane manufacturers' group will launch research on developing a system that will prevent an airplane from crashing, even if it has wing or engine trouble, or part of its body is damaged. The attempt by the Society of Japanese Aerospace Companies (SJAC) comprising Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. and others, will be the first of its kind for a civilian airplane, although a similar project is under way in the U.S. for military aircraft. The group aims to install the system in a domestic passenger plane currently under development. It will also consider supplying it to foreign aircraft makers, such as Boeing Co. and Airbus. The envisaged system will be designed to control the ailerons, engine and other parts, enabling a plane to continue flying if trouble occurs in any one of these areas. The automatic control system will be based on the neural network theory modeled on the human brain. The system may be able to keep an airplane flying and guide it to a nearby airport even if its vertical fin has been disrupted, making its rudders uncontrollable, which occurred in one of the worst airplane disasters in Japan in 1985, when a Japan Airlines Co. jumbo jet crashed into a mountain in Gunma Prefecture. Researchers sent from the society's member firms will cooperate with Shinji Suzuki, a University of Tokyo professor well-versed in neural networks. In the initial two years of the project starting fiscal 2002, the research will be conducted mainly through computer simulations. The budget for the first year of the project, which was commissioned by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, is 28 million Yen. (April 9, the Nikkei Business Daily)