Governor Hideaki Omura of Aichi Prefecture in central Japan announced on December 13th a plan to build two new runways to the east and west of the 3,500 meter existing runway at Central Japan International Airport. The development plan will be discussed on December 14 at the second meeting of the Council, which is made up of prefectures of Aichi, Gifu and Mie, the city of Nagoya, local economic organizations, the airport operating company and other related parties.

In the previous plan, the second runway was to be constructed in newly reclaimed land in the west side of the airport island and the current runway, which was put into service in 2005. The new plan is to renovate the current taxiway 210 meters to the east of the current runway on the passenger terminal side, and add a new runway of 3.290 meters long and 45 meters wide.

After the construction of the second runway, a large-scale repair work is planned to upgrade the current runway. When the rehabilitation completes, the new runway will be dedicated for takeoffs and the current runway will be for landings only, which would increase the capacity up to 1.2 times.

After that, the 3,500 meters long, 45 meters wide third runway will be constructed on the landfill site on 760 meters west of the second runway. After the new runway is operational, the current runway will be abolished. The airport's total capacity is expected to increase to 1.6 times the current level. According to Governor Omura, the total construction cost of the second runway is estimated at about 14 billion yen. The timeline of the development has not been decided yet. (2021/12/14)