Narita International Airport

Narita International Airport is Tokyo's primary long-haul international gateway and Japan's busiest airport for international passenger traffic, serving 88 airlines on 236 routes to 111 nonstop destinations — the widest airline count in East Asia outside Hong Kong and Seoul. Located 60 km (37 mi) northeast of central Tokyo in rural Chiba Prefecture, NRT was built specifically to offload international flights from cramped Haneda in 1978 after nearly two decades of fierce land-expropriation protests, a conflict known as the Sanrizuka Struggle that delayed the opening by five years and left portions of runway land surrounded by holdout farmhouses to this day. Narita is the principal Pacific hub for ANA and Japan Airlines, both Star Alliance and Oneworld anchors respectively, and serves as United Airlines' largest Asian operation and the historic transpacific pivot for Delta (inherited from Northwest). The airport's geographic position places it within a 4-hour flight of Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Manila, and within a single long-haul hop of every major North American and European hub, making it one of a small handful of airports in the world that bridges Asia, North America, and Europe on daily service. The airfield operates two parallel runways: the full-length 16R/34L at 13,123 ft (4,000 m) and the shorter 16L/34R at 8,202 ft (2,500 m), with a long-planned and repeatedly delayed third runway still unbuilt due to the same land disputes that shaped the airport's origin. Three terminals host the full spectrum of traffic: Terminal 1 for Star Alliance, Terminal 2 for Oneworld and SkyTeam, and Terminal 3 — Japan's first dedicated low-cost terminal — opened in 2015 for Jetstar Japan, Peach, and Spring Airlines.