February 17, 2005
In Japan’s Chubu (Central) region, an international airport was officially opened on an artificial island in Ise Bay within the city of Tokoname. Chubu Centrair International Airport – widely called Centrair — was built to replace Nagoya Airport (now a domestic secondary airport known as Nagoya Airfield) as that area’s primary access point for global flights.
Centrair is owned and operated by Central Japan International Airport Company (CJIAC). Kunikatsu Yamashita, CJIAC’s senior executive vice president, highlighted the overarching goals for the airport in an article that he wrote for the November 2003 issue of Ship & Ocean Newsletter.
Yamashita asserted, “We are aiming at the construction of a competitive international airport that is superior in convenience and in economic terms as a gateway connecting the Chubu area and the world, and hope to contribute to the development of a domestic and global air route network in the 21st century through the provision of attractive customer-focused services.”
Centrair’s formal opening took place just in time for the facility to accommodate large numbers of people traveling to the region for an international exhibition. Expo 2005 was held from March 25 to September 25 of that year at a location just east of the city of Nagoya, which is 22 miles (35 kilometers) north of Centrair.
In the time since then, Centrair has become one of Japan’s busiest airports. It has also been the recipient of several worldwide awards and honors. These accolades have included Airport Service Quality Awards presented annually by Airports Council International.
Photo Credit: Emran Kassim (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en)
For more information on Chubu Centrair International Airport, please check out https://www.centrair.jp/en/corporate/operation/result.html and https://www.airport-technology.com/projects/central_asia/
Transportation History 
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