NewbieRunner

According to this NHK article (sorry in Japanese only) passengers originating in the US and connecting to international flights will no longer be required to clear transfer security at NRT. The arrangement is expected to start next week. Similar arrangements (One Stop Security) are already in place at a number of airports in Europe.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/201...909411000.html

AlwaysAisle

Wonder if they still check boarding pass or an itinerary of a transferring passenger? Beside security check, another purpose of transit check was to make sure passenger is departing from NRT that day. NRT is not 24 hrs. airport and the terminals close at night. They want to make sure transiting passengers are departing NRT that day, not next day nor few days later.

The article on NHK said that Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism says securities on flights from the U.S. is done sufficiently. Interesting to say that because I think it was last year that a middle age women carried a box of a gun bullets in her carry on from the U.S. and she realized she had bullets when she arrived in Japan.

I think there was some political mumble jumble went on between Japan and the U.S. behind the scene. I think there are many other countries which preform passenger security screening on the same level as what is done at the U.S. airports.

WilcoRoger

That would be quite worrying, given the TSA's 95% failure rate...

AlwaysAisle

Sure, I agree with that but I did not want to take this thread fast into OMNI so I did not say "many other countries do far better jobs than TSA at the U.S. airports does."

evergrn

I wonder if this means you can freely go between Intl-arrival and Intl-departure zones both ways, provided you stepped off a flight from US.
If so, I could stop by ANA departure lounge on Intl-Dom transit.
I could stop by ANA lounge first to shower, then time-permitting enter Jpn, then back out to airside on Intl-Intl transit.

mjm

This sounds like a very likely scenario.

Very true.

jib71

I would expect that valid boarding passes for departing flights will still be required to enter the departure zone.
If not, then arriving passengers from the US with club memberships have effectively acquired a new arrivals lounge. Wahey!

AlwaysAisle

When NRT opened in 1978 that was the way airport was setup. International arrival passengers were not segregated from departing passengers, merged into departure gate area upon arrival. Then later they changed to segregation of arrival and departure passengers like it is set up today.

If NRT Airport authority will get rid of segregation of arrival and departure then one likely possibility is that departing flights to the U.S. will have additional security at departure gate, where the U.S. will claim that there are transit passengers who originated from a country with insufficient security details. Such is already taking place at airports elsewhere not in Japan. Current setup of arriving transit passengers going through security get rid of that need, but looks like the U.S. used its muscle and told Japanese authority that passengers arriving from the U.S. should not have to go through the security.

NewbieRunner

In European countries where One-Stop Security (OSS) has been implemented for a number of years, one of the main drivers is commercial. Eliminating transfer security for passengers from the US makes NRT more desirable than say ICN or TPE. Some airports cannot implement OSS in full due to the layout of arrival and departure gate areas.

OSS is implemented in full between most EU countries (the main exception is the UK) as well as for arrivals from the US, Canada, and Singapore. Countries currently in negotiation with the EU include Hong Kong, Israel and Japan.

5khours

From a security point of view, you need to physically segregate US arriving pax from pax arriving other countries. Just letting pax with US boarding passes and identification skip security won't work if US arriving pax can mingle with pax from other countries before security. Given that I suspect that this will be implemented by allowing pax with an ongoing boarding passes to exit directly into the departure area on the 3rd floor after exiting the jet bridge rather than being required to take the escalators/stairs up to secure arrivals areas on the 4th floor. Additionally there will be security to prevent pax from going back down, once they have gone up to the 4th floor unless they go back through security.

MSPeconomist

hamburgler

This is in fact part of why I suspect this is being implemented... though it will be interesting to see how many flights are left after 24 frequencies go to HND next year (12 US carrier, 12 JP carrier)

NewbieRunner

According to this website (also in Japanese) OSS started today (13 May) but only for passengers arriving on 17 flights operated by 8 airlines (JL, NH, DL, UA, AA, HA, SQ, KE). It will be gradually extended to cover all 50 or so flights arriving from the US.

According to the figure mentioned above about one half of the current US arrivals will still remain in NRT.

1kBill

TK has a similar arrangement at IST for flights arriving from the USA - no transit security for pax arriving from the USA and connecting to another international flight. Personnel were on the jet bridge checking the onward boarding passes to make sure that the people truly had an onward international flight. This occurred last November at the old IST airport.

hamburgler

Came in recently on NH from SEA and got a dreaded bus arrival... no signs of any changes and transfer passengers have to go through security. Bus arrivals are probably the trickiest setup as there really is not a route setup to go directly to departures. Jetway arrivals on the other hand can adjust pretty easily to split transfers and just send out through the departure gate.