Airports fall short of predicted usage

Passenger numbers at most of 30 airports opened or expanded since 2000 have fallen short of projections made before the projects got under way, an Asahi Shimbun survey has found.

Only four of the 30 handled more passengers than predicted.

The survey indicated many of Japan's 97 airports were built or expanded with taxpayer money apparently based on inflated forecasts by the central and local governments.

According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, demand forecasts play a crucial role in deciding whether or not to build airports, extend runways or expand terminals.

The projections are made by the state or the prefecture in charge of the airport on the basis of the rate of population increase, economic growth and flight frequencies, among other data.

The survey covered 30 airports that opened or had runway extensions in the past decade. Their "achievement rate" was calculated by comparing the forecast for the most recent target year with actual passenger figures.

Passenger traffic surpassed the target at Hiroshima, Okayama, Amakusa and Yamaguchi-Ube airports, at 110, 106, 102 and 101 percent, respectively.

Hiroshima Airport had its runway extended to 3,000 meters in 2001. The project was approved in fiscal 1994 based on predictions that passenger numbers would reach 2.98 million in fiscal 2005. The actual figure turned out to be 3.29 million.

Nineteen airports, including Aomori, Kochi and Kita-Kyushu, failed to meet projections.

The lowest was 17 percent for Okushiri Airport, an island airport in Hokkaido. It was followed by 21 percent for Oki Airport, also on an island, and 24 percent for Kita-Kyushu.

Built in a city with a population of almost 1 million, Kita-Kyushu Airport had a projection made in fiscal 1992 of 5.22 million passengers for fiscal 2005. But the actual number was 1.27 million in fiscal 2006, after it was opened in March that year to replace an old airport.

Figures were unavailable for Narita, Haneda, Shizuoka and Kansai airports either because the target years for their projections had yet to come or expansion projects based on the projections were incomplete. Projections did not exist for Wakkanai, Okadama and Okinoerabu airports.

Such inaccurate forecasts drew criticism in a government review of budget requests for fiscal 2010.

In assessing subsidy requests for debt-ridden Kansai International Airport last Monday, a reviewer said the demand projection for Kansai "was too optimistic, leading to huge losses."

"It is unreasonable to pass the resulting burden on to the people," the reviewer said.

Before building a second runway, airport authorities estimated 42.4 million passengers would use it in fiscal 2018. The actual figure for fiscal 2008 was 15.1 million.

Takayoshi Igarashi, a professor of public works at Hosei University, says the central and local governments tend to use overly optimistic figure in their forecasts.

"As many as 97 airports have been built across the nation helped by those optimistic projections," he said.

Tetsuo Yai, a professor of transportation engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, said projections should take into account detailed airline data such as fares and flight numbers as well.(IHT/Asahi: November 23,2009)