All Nippon Airways will stop flying from Mount Fuji Shizuoka Airport, the airport that calls itself the closest in Japan to Mount Fuji, after 17 years of losses on the routes. The airline announced the de facto withdrawal in January and will suspend its two routes, to Naha and to New Chitose in Hokkaido, from October. There is no prospect of a resumption.
Four days before the airline pulled out, about 30 parents and children gathered around one of its Boeing 737s for an aviation class ANA ran at the airport on September 27. A pilot and cabin crew from Shizuoka explained how the landing gear is stowed after takeoff. "This is a place you normally never get to see," one told the group.
Kimihiro Kinoshita, a 44-year-old high school teacher, watched his son, a sixth-grader who wants to become an air traffic controller, take it all in. Kinoshita's feelings were mixed. His family had flown ANA for holidays and he had used it to scout school trips. "I was proud that Japan's flagship airline flew out of Shizuoka," he said. "It's sad."
A network under strain
ANA's domestic business, long a support for the wider aviation industry, is at a turning point. Major carriers are effectively running at a loss, and once-fierce rivals Japan Airlines and ANA are now working together. The Asahi Shimbun is running a five-part series on the pressure on Japan's domestic routes; this is the first installment.
For Shizuoka, the cost is counted in routes. The airport loses its links to Okinawa and Hokkaido, and with them the traffic that filled them.