Originally Posted by
joejones
The Japanese government has a pretty explicit objective in expanding HND's international capacity: they want to make Tokyo more attractive as an international business center and tourist destination, and they think that improving airport convenience is an important part of promoting those goals. The HND expansion is not about, and was never about, making Tokyo more popular or competitive as a sixth-freedom hub.
MLIT's website about the Haneda expansion illustrates this well -- unfortunately it's only in Japanese, but it focuses on the importance of improving O&D access to Tokyo without a single mention of competing with other Asian airports for through traffic.
FWIW, HND is physically about 50% larger than NRT, and I believe it will still be larger after the third NRT runway is completed. I also don't think they can significantly expand NRT beyond the third runway without re-settling a lot of people, whereas there is still quite a bit of unused space in HND's existing footprint -- the main constraint at HND is the surrounding airspace and noise restrictions.
I stand corrected regarding the airport land size. I grew up being told NRT had the largest acreage in Jpn, but I guess HND has since overtaken them with massive landfill add-ons.
I've only read the cover page of your link with very general info, so I'll have to spend some time reading the subpages.
But TYO's desire to regain status as a major hub and your statement that HND's expansion is not about making it a hub are not mutually exclusive. Scenario 2 in my prior post 56 would illustrate how this is so.
Although I haven't heard it talked about much recently, 4-5 years ago it was constantly lamented in Japanese media that NRT was losing its status as Asia's gateway airport and losing traffic to ICN et al, that this was due to NRT's limitations and something had to be done about it.