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New Chitose Airport

airport in Hokkaido, Japan

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ908296
Source-derived summary

New Chitose Airport (新千歳空港, Shin-Chitose Kūkō) (IATA: CTS, ICAO: RJCC) is an international airport located 2.7 nautical miles (5.0 km; 3.1 mi) south-southeast of Chitose and Tomakomai, Hokkaidō, Japan, serving the Sapporo metropolitan area. By both traffic and land area, it is the largest airport in Hokkaidō.

It is adjacent to Chitose Air Base, a Japan Air Self-Defense Force base which houses F-15 Eagle fighter jets, the Japanese Air Force One government aircraft and a number of smaller emergency response aircraft and helicopters. Chitose and New Chitose have separate runways but are interconnected by taxiways, and aircraft at either facility can enter the other by ground if permitted; the runways at Chitose are occasionally used to relieve runway closures at New Chitose due to winter weather.

New Chitose Airport is one of six 24-hour airports in Japan, but it is the only inland airport; also, this airport has daily opening hours limit unlike other 24-hour operational airport terminals.

As of 2018, it was the fifth-busiest airport in Japan, serving 23.7 million passengers, and ranked 64th in the world in terms of passengers carried. The 819 km (509 mi) Sapporo–Tokyo Haneda route is the second busiest air route in the world, with 12.1 million passengers carried in 2025.

The airport continues to upgrade its facilities to accommodate the growing number of passengers, and Skytrax has it ranked 49th in the top 100 airports in the world in 2024, a jump up from 102nd the previous year. As a result, the airport was awarded Skytrax's World's Most Improved Airport for 2024.

History

New Chitose opened on July 20, 1988, to replace the adjacent Chitose Airport, a joint-use facility which had served passenger flights since 1963.

Editorial summary

“New Chitose Airport” enters the record as airport in Hokkaido, Japan. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Chitose, Airport and airport can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA strong orientation record where physical form, institutional use and historical geography need to be read together. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2018, 2025, 2024, 1988—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1988. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Chitose, Airport and airport.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“New Chitose Airport” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Chitose, Airport and airport provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q908296. Authority coordinates are 42.775, 141.692. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2018, 2025, 2024 and 1988.

Critical limits

Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “New Chitose Airport”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow New Chitose Airport primary sources, New Chitose Airport archive and Chitose research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “New Chitose Airport”?
  2. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
  3. Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from New Chitose Airport” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.