Update Kumamoto Airport;: April 20, Resumes Operations Partially

On April 19, small number of departing flight resumed at Kumamoto Airport where severe earthquakes struck in series since last Thursday.

One of departing flights bound for Nagoya had its check in and all procedures under the sky as the terminal building is still closed.

On April 20, some 30 flights will be arriving to Kumamoto from Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya by Japan Airlines and ANA.

The terminal building, later, restarted its business only partially on Tuesday.

Kumamoto Airport Resumes Operations of Arriving Flights On April 19

Kumamoto Airport, with its terminal buildings were damaged by previous earthquakes, has resumed flight services from today, for only fewer arriving flights from Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya.

All of departing flights from the airport are still cancelled as baggage security check cannot be performed inside the damaged buildings.

The airport is closer to the epicenter of the first major earthquake of April 14 and severely damaged including collapse of the ceiling inside the building.

Kumamoto and Oita region are  still under the pressure of continuing earthquakes numbered over 500 since the previous week and over 100,000 residents are accommodated inside refugee camps.

Update Advisory: Kumamoto Airport Closed

As of Monday April 18, Kumamoto Airport still has suspended all of commercial flights but open for emergency air lift operations on 24-hour basis. 

Relief supplies are being flown to Kumamoto but due to destructed land transportation paths, it is very hard to be delivered to all refugee residents, reportedly over 100,000 staying out of their homes.


Over 500 times of earthquakes have been counted since the first major quake on April 14.

Update: Kumamoto Airport Closed on April 17

All flights to and from Kumamoto Airport are cancelled on Sunday, April 17, too.

Kumamoto and its vicinity are still having frequent earthquakes of major scale over the days. At present there is no sign of getting back to normal conditions.

Kumamoto Airport Closed by Earthquakes

Terminal building at Kumamoto International Airport （IATA: KMJ - ICAO: RJFT) has been closed since early morning of Saturday, April 16. A large-scale earthquake in the midnight of Saturday damaged the buildings by collapsing the ceilings. All flights at Kumamoto Airport are cancelled on April 16.

1. The midnight earthquake was recorded 7 by Richter's scale and surpassed the previous one at 9:26 pm (JST) on April 14.
2. Japan Airlines cancelled all of 24 flights while ANA cancelled all of its 32 flights on April 16. Solaseed Air, Kyushu-based low cost carrier, cancelled its 10 flights bound for Haneda-Tokyo. Other airlines include Jetstar Japan for two flights to Narita, Fuji Dream Airlines (6 flights to Komaki-Nagoya) and Amakusa Airline to remote Amakusa island.
3. Reportedly, the runway of Kumamoto Airport is intact while the terminal building was damaged by earthquakes.

MRJ to be shown to G7 VIPｓ in May

Mitsubishi MRJ, photo Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation

Showcase Japan High Tech at Gateway of May Ise-Shima G7 Summit

Chubu International Airport, or Centrair, will display two examples of Japanese technologies: Toyota Mirai, fuel cell car and MRJ regional jet by Mitsubishi Aircraft for visiting VIPs in order to appeal Japanese advancement in technologies.

The first example of  MRJ, the first jet airliner developed in Japan, will be parked on the airport apron where  the top leaders of the summit  will transfer from their aircraft to helicopters to reach the venue of the summit, Kashikojima, Mie Prefecture, and Japan wants to impress them.

A model of MRJ cabin interior will be shown at media center of the summit to show the new aircraft to the press of many countries as well.

Toyota Mirai, fuel cell vehicle

ANA Collaborates with Vietnam Airlines

ANA Invests in Vietnam Airlines

Compiled from the Yomiuri Shimbun, 12 January 2016

ANA Holdings, a parent com;pany of All Nippon Airways,  announced on January 12 that the company and Vietnam AIrlines reached to an agreement in capital and business collaboration to be signed.

ANA will acquire about 8.8% of the issued stocks of Vietnam Airlines for JPY13 billion (USD111 million)  by coming summer. Upon agreement of alliances that respective companies are members, the two airlines will start code share and other airport services joint operations from October at earliest and also start joint service in mileage programs. ANA will send  its representative to the board of directors of Vietnam Airlines.

Vietnam Airlines has been collaborating with Japan Airlines but it will cease its relations with JAL after this new tie up with ANA.

Passenger traffic between Japan and Vietnam is on the rise these years and ANA

hopes to see a further business demand between the two countries as Trans Pacific Partnership will take effect soon.

Vietnam Airlines operates a total of 66 flights every week in  ten routes; Hanoi-Haneda (weekly 7 flights), -Narita (weekly 7 flights), Chubu (weekly 7 flights) and Fukuoka (four flights a week); from Ho Chi Minh to Narita (14 flights), Kansai (7 flights), Chubu (4 flights) and Fukuoka (twice a week) and from Danang to Narita (weekly 7 flights).

While ANA flies daily in Narita-Ho Chi Minh and Haneda-Hanoi routes. ANA Holdings says the load factor for both routes are kept somewhere 70 to 80 %.

Vietnam Airlines will become the second recipient of capital investment by ANA following Asiana of the South Korea that ANA holds 0.63% of the stocks.■

Wedding in Sky? ANA offers a plan.....

ANA Sells Flying Wedding from/to Fukuoka

from Aviation Wire, December 5, 2015

ANA Holdings, a holding company of a major Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways, offers a flying wedding on board a charter flight through its subsidiary called ANA Sales. At present, the offer is for only once and the date is fixed on March 26, 2016 departing and arriving Fukuoka International Airport.  Only one married couple can get the chance. When many applications arrive, ANA will choose the lucky couple by drawing.

ANA will fly its own Boeing 737-500 (monoclass 126 seats) operated by ANA Wings. Its planned schedule is as follows: bride and gloom with their family attendants should be arriving at Fukuoka Airport by noon and the flight departs the airport at 1 pm; a ceremony will take place while 1.5-hr flight. Then, wedding party will take place on ground at reserved party place around 5 pm.

ANA will accept applications until December 11. The cost is JPY4.8 million (USD 40,000) that includes the charter flight, drinks and meals for up to 60 guests, wedding dressrental, photography, courtesy bus drive, MC and coordinating, ANA says.

ANA Group conducted flying wedding in October 2013 on another charter flight from/to Chubu International (Centrair) Airport.■

Japan Develops Emergency Aircraft Divert System For Next Major Earthquakes

Anticipating Next Big Earthquakes, Japan Develops Automatic Stand-by Landing Airport Designation System

Compiled from Sankei Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun, both released on August 27 2015

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) has introduced a new aviation support system to advise alternative landing airports for commercial airliners in the air for the event of large earthquake may stop operations of the original airports in Japan.

1. The system will inform each aircraft of a candidate landing place individually and immediately judging from remaining fuel and other factors. This system, called Emergency Divert Flight Operations Support, will be tested in current fiscal year that will end on March 31, 2016.
2. The East Japan Great Earthquake of 2011 had forced closing  both of Tokyo’s main airports, Haneda and Narita, at once and a total of 86 aircraft heading for there had to alter destinations. Among them, 14 aircraft, as their remaining fuel was too low, declared emergency, calling for quick reactions from the ground, according to MLIT.
3. Current system takes longer time and manpower as the ground control has to ask fuel remaining for each aircraft by voice radio while checking the conditions of alternative airport for any damage by telephone.
4. However, the new system will calculate the remaining fuel volume from the original fuel amount at take-off and the location of the aircraft when a natural disaster occurs.  As each airport will input its damage report to the system, it will divert each aircraft to most appropriate airport with consideration of priority  while the information will be shared with airline companies.
5. MLIT, with assumption of the worst case, a simultaneous earthquakes of Nankai Trough and Tokyo Direct Hit happening on noon of a weekday when air traffic over Japan reaches its peak.  MLIT’s simulation assumed eight airports from Narita to Miyazaki will be closed at once. This simulation showed 133 aircraft would be in the air that will need immediate traffic control.

IHI Hopes to Start Commercial Production of Biofuel More Efficiently

IHI advances on biofuel commercial production by mastering volume production of Algae

Compiled from ZUU online 2015/5/22 14:20

IHI (Tokyo Stock Exchange code: 7013) announced on May 22 that the heavy-industrial manufacturer  succeeded in large-size culture of algae for biofuel production.  Algae has been taken attention for its potentiality to be converted to jet fuel and other companies such Euglena that tries to extract fuel from euglena and JX Holdings are moving forward to commercial production of biofuel, making the market more vibrant and competitive.

IHI revealed its volume culture technology has been developed jointly with Kobe National University and Chitose Laboratory as a commissioned program entrusted by NEDO (New Energy Development Organization) under the title of ‘Strategic Future Biomass energy Utilization Technology Development.’  According to the company press release, they succeeded in volume culture of Botryococcus braunii that generates hydrocarbon oil as alternative fuel with higher growth rate.

As for development of new types of biofuel, it has been said to keep culturing of those algae including euglena that generate oily stuff while ensuring continuous and stable manners by conditions of their culture. Euglena company, for example, is reportedly devising more active photonic synthesis by blowing carbon dioxide into a culture pool.

IHI announced that the joint research group has succeeded in stable culture of algae with only photonic synthesis  at its test facility centering on a culture pond as wide as 1,500 square meters in Kagoshima, southern part of Japan. As the previous culture called for sugar as nutrition of algae, they might have moved forward in R&D.

IHI will further move  ahead to lower fuel production cost by improvement of the whole processes  for anticipation of doing business by this technology in other countries, according to the statement.　

（END)

Japan Nears to Develop its own Fifth-generation Fighter

F-3 will become Japan’s First Indigenous Fighter Jet in Post-WW2 Years

compiled from SANKEI Shimbun online, March 17, 2015

keywords: Fifth-generation Fighter; F-3; ATD-X; HSE

Japan’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) has confirmed its policy to develop a new stealth fighter plane, temporarily called F-3, to replace current F-2 in Japan’s Air Self-defense Force as it sees the development of a powerful powerplant is enough feasible. This means that Japan is able to produce a high performance fighter by its own technologies. Still eying the possibility of joint development with U.S., Japan has taken a step closer to develop world-class indigenous fifth-generation fighter jets. This project will become a big project and  have far-reaching effects to not only national security but also economy, diplomacy and others.

The new engine for the new fighter with 15-ton thrust is called High-Power Slim Engine (HSE) and will be developed jointly by IHI and Defense Technical Research and Development Institute (TRDI) based on a prototype engine, XF5, that propels down-sclaed Advanced Technical Demonstrator (ATD-X). ATD-X will start flight test from the summer of 2015. The first unit of HSE for demonstration will be complete by 2018.

Manufacturing of 15-ton class jet engine for fighters calls for higher level of engineering and only a few companies, such as Pratt & Whitney, General Electric and Rolls-Royce can do it. Engine supply was a choking point for Japan to develop its indigenous fighter planes so far: without the supply of engines from U.S., it was just a drawings on paper. Once Japan tried to develop its own domestic fighter in F-2 project, it turned out to be a joint program with U.S. Should HSE really comes true, Japan finally will be able to assemble its truly indigenous fighters.

Higher thrust calls for higher temperature  of engine combustion. ATD-X carries two 5-ton class ‘demonstration engines’; temperature within the engines would climb as high as 1,600C. HSE would increase this temperature to 1,800C. The key technologies to achieve this is high-temperature withstanding materials such as single-crystal alloy and cooling of core parts of engines such as compressor, combustor, and high-pressure turbines where Japan’s unique technologies would be applied.

Engines for fifth-generation fighters call for smaller diameter but higher thrust while keeping its stealthiness. Thrust of HSE will be three times larger than ATD-X demonstrator’s engine but HSE’s diameter will be 70 centimeters while ATD-X’s is one-meter size.

In the mean time, ATD-X will commence its flight test sometime in summer of this year. A set of new technologies are planned at flight tests such as advanced stealthiness, high agile maneuverability to alter the direction of the airframe while flying straight by computer-controlled engine thrust vectors. Gathering of data would be a basis of the development of F-3 and its development plans would be formulated by 2018. When everything goes as scheduled, F-3 would be deployed by 2018.

‘F-3 would become a big turning point in Japanese aviation industry. Japan already has superior technological edges for stealth aircraft such as airframe structures, materials, peripheries of engine,’ told Akira Sato, Vice Minister of Defense when he was asked of what he expected to the development of F-3.

Even though Japan did produce certain types of military aircraft during the WW2 including Zero fighter, it was prohibited to produce any aircraft under the occupation years and its aviation industry virtually was dismantled, making aviation technologies of this country lag so much behind the world trend.

Previous examples of Japan’s works are F-2, which was jointly developed with U.S. based on the design of F-16, and F-1 of which have all retired already; both types were developed as support fighters at the beginning to intercept enemy invasion ships and partly incoming unfriendly aircraft of other countries. As for its capability to deal with fighter-to-fighter, F-2 is less powerful than Mitsubishi/Boeing F-15, the mainstay fighter type to defend Japan’s airspace.

However, F-3 is intended to achieve superior performance than the latest fighter jets of other countries in air battle.

Fighter jets are often referred to symbolize the level of aviation technologies and engineering of respective countries.  After 70 years of void, Japan has come to materialize its own fighter jet for the first time; F-3 may lead to revival of Japanese aviation industry as ‘historical turning point.’

Development of F-3 will contribute to Japan’s home economy by creating new demands. ‘As over 1,000 companies would be involved in development of a new fighter jet, its economic impact is tremendous. We will see increased employment and emergence of new technologies,’  Sato said.

Total size of procurement of F-3 may reach to 100, almost equivalent with the number of F-2 that will be retiring in coming years. MoD estimates JPY 500 to 800 billion (4.2 to 6.7 billion dollars) for the development of the new fighter jets. However, this does not include other costs of the production, retrofit upgrading, and disposal after its service life is over. MoD’s estimate in 2009 as Life Cycle Cost of 100 F-2s was JPY 3.352 trillion (28 billion dollars).

MoD’s latest calculation goes ahead: when the national budget of JPY4 trillion  (33 billion dollars) for procurement of 100 F-3s, it would create direct demands at aviation industry as much as JPY 6.9 trillion, followed by increased consumptions by more affordable employees and their families of the relevant business worth JPY1.4 trillion, leading to its overall economic effect to JPY 8.3 trillion (70 billion dollars) and employment creation for 240 thousand people.

Fallen Skymark

Why Skymark Airlines, Japan’s 3rd largest, Was Forced to File Bankruptcy

29 January 2014

Skymark Airlines, the third largest airline in Japan, will file bankruptcy according to Japan's civil rehabilitation processes. The airline will maintain its scheduled flights for time being while rebuilding its business.  This is the second case of airline bankruptcy after Japan Airlines in 2010.

1. The total debts of Skymark Airlines are reportedly amounting over JPY100 billion (USD 850 million), including penalty of USD700 million billed by Airbus for cancellation of A380s.
2. Yomiuri Shimbun cited two major faults that forced Skymark to bankruptcy.
3. First, its ambition to enter international routes, Skymark tried to purchase six-fleet of A380 with JPY190 billion, two times as large as its annual revenue. The decision was strongly asserted by Shinichi Nishikubo, President and CEO who owns 30% stake in the company, according to reports. But after all, cash-hungry Skymark was unable to pay the bills from Airbus and ultimately Skymark was charged of a penalty worth USD700 million.
4. Second, Skymark introduced  Airbus A330 (271 seats). Compared with Boeing 737 that the airline has been using , A330 is bigger in capacity but also bigger in expenses. With LCCs behind, Skymark tried to catch up with leading Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways by means of differentiated services such as all-business class cabin and short-skirt clad flight attendants but its yield was not growing to match with huge investment and the investment itself was not realistic with its own management capacity.
5. With the sudden announcement in the evening of January 28, Skymark also told its reshuffle of management officers. Shinichi Nishikubo stepped down from its top officer seat. Tokyo Local Court,
6. Skymark holds 36 slots at Haneda (Tokyo) International Airport, a highly lucrative asset that other airlines may be attracted.  It was business strategy of Nishikubo to hold its third place in airline business in Japan by launching code sharing with Japan Airlines and ANA altogether that never took place after all.
7. With its cash dwindling day by day, once JPY30 billion was just JPY4.5, Skymark had no other choice but filing bankruptcy. That was a departure from its original policy to maintain business independence.