Kōchi Airport ( ja, 高知空港, '')'' , also known as Kōchi Ryōma Airport ( ja, 高知龍馬空港, '), is a regional airport in Nankoku, a city in Kōchi Prefecture of

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

. It is located on the southeastern coast, eastAIS Japan
of the city of Kōchi. The airport has a single runway handling small to medium size aircraft. The two storey terminal building is located to the north side of the runway. The arrivals level is on the first floor and departures on the second. There are 14 retail stores in the small terminal building. There is an observation deck on the third floor of the building. Transportation from the airport is by car, taxi or bus.

History

Kōchi Airport was originally built in 1944 as Kōchi Airfield for the

Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...

and from 1945 to 1952 the airport was under command of

US forces The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...

. The airfield became a civilian airport in 1952 and first flights started operating in 1954. The runway was expanded in 1960 and 1980 and later to to handle larger aircraft. In November 2003 it became the first airport in Japan to be nicknamed after a person:

Bakumatsu period was the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji governm ...

leader

Sakamoto Ryōma was a Japanese ''samurai'', a '' shishi'' and influential figure of the ''Bakumatsu'' and establishment of the Empire of Japan in the late Edo period. He was a low-ranking ''samurai'' from the Tosa Domain on Shikoku and became an active oppo ...

."Japan's Kochi airport named after samurai with six-shooter"
''ThingsAsian.com'', 2003-11-16.

Facts

* of cargo annually (2000) * 13,500 landings annually (2000) * 3 gates handling 37 aircraft

Statistics

* 2,400,000 passengers annually (1,932,000 in 2000)

Airlines and destinations

Incidents and accidents

On 13 March 2007, All Nippon Airways Flight 1603, a

Bombardier Dash 8 The De Havilland Canada DHC-8, commonly known as the Dash 8, is a series of turboprop-powered regional airliners, introduced by de Havilland Canada (DHC) in 1984. DHC was later bought by Boeing in 1988, then by Bombardier in 1992; then by ...

, on a flight from

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

to Kōchi, landed safely at the Kōchi Airport after the front wheel of the plane failed to deploy. As a result, ANA's fleet of thirteen Bombardier DHC-8 aircraft were grounded for emergency inspections.Japanese airline grounds Bombardier fleet after plane makes emergency landing
- All News Radio online - Obtained March 14, 2007.

References

External links

Kōchi Airport

from

Japan Airlines , also known as JAL (''Jaru'') or , is an international airline and Japan's flag carrier and largest airline as of 2021 and 2022, headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its main hubs are Tokyo's Narita International Airport and Haneda Airport, as w ...

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kochi Airport Airports in Japan Transport in Kōchi Prefecture Buildings and structures in Kōchi Prefecture Airports established in 1944 1944 establishments in Japan Nankoku, Kōchi