Axonos Teases Upcoming Tokyo Haneda Airport for X-Plane 12
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Axonos is developing a new Tokyo Haneda Airport scenery addon for X-Plane 12. The article traces the airport's 95-year history from a tiny 1931 airfield through its evolution into Japan's busiest hub with 78.7 million annual passengers, covering key infrastructure milestones including runway extensions, terminal construction, post-WWII American occupation and expansion, the 1960s jet-age upgrades, and Narita's 1978 inauguration which relegated Haneda to domestic service for three decades before its recent international renaissance.
Excerpt from Threshold
Axonos has recently teased their upcoming rendition of Tokyo Haneda Airport (RJTT) for X-Plane 12, serving the Greater Tokyo Area and averaging 78.7 million passengers per year, making it the busiest airport in Japan.
The airport started its life in 1931 as a tiny airfield with a 300-meter-long concrete runway, a small passenger terminal, and two hangars.
Traffic figures grew throughout the 1930s, leading to the extension of the runway to 800 meters and the construction of a new, also 800-meter-long, runway. The airport’s land area also increased from 53 hectares to 72.8 hectares.
It was also during that time period that the Japanese government started planning to build a new Tokyo Municipal Airport on an artificial island in Koto Ward. At the time, it was five times the size of Haneda and easily the largest airport in the world by the era’s standards. Work was scheduled to start in 1939 and finish by 1941, but World War 2 put an end to it permanently.
Post World War 2, Haneda was occupied by the United States Army, becoming Haneda Army Air Base. Many nearby residents were evicted during that time so they could carry out further expansion to accommodate their infrastructure. Both runways were extended to 1,650 meters and 2,100 meters, respectively. By the time everything was finally completed in 1946, the airport was already occupying 257.4 hectares, slightly larger than the old Tokyo Municipal Airport project.
Part of the base was returned to Japan in 1952 and named Tokyo International Airport. The remainder remained under American control until it was returned to Japan in 1958.
When Japan Airlines began domestic operations from the airport, there was no passenger terminal. This became a reality in 1955 after two years of hard work, followed by an extension for international flights in 1963.
The introduction of jet aircraft in the 1960s led to many changes and improvements, including runway extensions, the repurposing of runways as aprons, and the construction of a new international arrivals facility.
In the late 1970s, Narita Airport was inaugurated, taking most of the international service in the area and relegating Haneda to a primarily domestic airport.
For the next 32 years, Haneda lived through its “domestic era,” a period in which many expansion projects were carried out to ensure it could actually serve Greater Tokyo properly: a new landfill in the mid-1980s, a new passenger terminal, new runways in the…
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