Japan Going Solo on Kansai Airport Project

The proposed multibillion-dollar Kansai International Airport, to be built on a huge man-made island near this industrial city in western Japan, represents the air terminal of the future, aviation experts say.

But its construction has become a source of added friction in Japan’s already-strained relations with its trading partners, including the United States.

Scheduled for completion in 1993, the 24-hour facility on a 1,482-acre island in Osaka Bay will be safe, versatile, profitable and environmentally sound, the experts told a seminar here.

“Kansai offers, at long last, a way of getting out from under the dark cloud of negativism concerning new airport construction that has been ominously hanging over civil aviation for too long,” said Duane Freer, air navigation director for the International Civil Aviation Organization.

But the question of foreign participation in the airport’s construction has become a major bone of contention between Tokyo and its Western trade partners.

Proposals Spurned

The United States and the European Community have accused airport construction authorities of protectionism and have asked them to liberalize tendering practices to make it easier for foreign companies to compete for contracts.

Just last week, the Kansai International Airport Co. rejected U.S. proposals to include foreign firms in the design teams for the project.

“Unlike American firms, we have a large number of in-house engineers. We therefore do not intend to include foreign or any other outside firms in our design teams,” KIAC President Yoshio Takeuchi said in a letter to U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce Bruce Smart.

Later, Takeuchi berated foreign companies for not trying hard enough to win contracts for the airport project. “Whether Americans are putting enough effort into entering the Japanese market . . . is doubtful,” he said.

Foreign companies must change their ways and adapt to the Japanese markets if they want a piece of the action, he said, adding that they should not expect Japan to change to meet their demands. “The Japanese put forth a lot of effort in trying to export,” Takeuchi said. “They strive hard to overcome language, culture and other differences.”

But Takeuchi said foreign companies would be given a fair chance to win contracts in the construction of the international airport. “If the foreign companies are intelligent, offer good products at low prices, we will welcome them,” he said. “It’s silly to limit the work to Japanese firms.”

The controversy concerns a project that is expected to cost more than $8.3 billion and will incorporate advanced information and transport networks. A 790-acre business, commercial and residential complex called the “Aeropolis” will also be built on reclaimed land connected to the airport island by bridge.

Kansai airport’s location away from the city will minimize noise pollution, usually a major irritant for local residents and an obstacle to round-the-clock operations. A 9 p.m. curfew has long been imposed on Osaka’s current international airport, situated in a crowded residential area northwest of the city.

Ship-Plane Combinations

Kansai is also well-placed to exploit another important area of growth for international airports--cargo handling, which is being boosted by development of freight routes that combine air and sea carriers.

“Cargo from Osaka to Frankfurt, for example, could first be shipped to Seattle or . . . (one of the Persian Gulf states) and then flown to Europe. Such routes would cost half as much as an all-air shipment and take half the time of seaborne cargo,” said Gerhard Gladitsch, Frankfurt airport’s air freight coordination officer.

The new Osaka airport is expected to handle 30 million passengers and 1.4 million tons of cargo a year, Kansai officials said. By contrast, the current Osaka airport handled about 18 million passengers and 300,000 tons of cargo last year.

The profitability of Kansai may, therefore, be assured. But the controversy over foreign participation in its construction could cloud the success of the project.

Separately, plans are also in the works to develop a new air cargo facility on Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. It could benefit if any major problems envelop the Kansai project.

Takahiro Yokomichi, governor of Hokkaido, recently visited the United States and gave a general invitation to U.S. companies to enter the bidding for both the design and the construction work on the proposed $500-million, 24-hour-a-day facility at Chitose, which is south of Hokkaido’s capital of Sapporo.

Yokomichi met with executives of U.S. cargo carriers, including Flying Tiger in Los Angeles, to encourage them to consider using the new airport.

After meeting with the governor, Lawrence M. Nagin, Flying Tiger’s general counsel and senior vice president for administration, said, “We’re looking at it in terms of the future. We’re going to study it.”

He welcomed Chitose’s plans for round-the-clock operations and added that the facility’s location in northern Japan would, “for certain operations, . . . allow different patterns of flights which would be positive.”