is an

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface ...

located eastAIS Japan
of

Hakodate Station is a railway station on the Hakodate Main Line in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan, operated by the Hokkaido Railway Company (JR Hokkaido). Lines *South Hokkaido Railway Company Dōnan Isaribi Tetsudō Line (Normally ends at Goryōkaku, but trains ge ...

Hakodate is a city and port located in Oshima Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan. It is the capital city of Oshima Subprefecture. As of July 31, 2011, the city has an estimated population of 279,851 with 143,221 households, and a population density of 412.8 ...

, a city in

Hokkaidō is Japan's second largest island and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel. The la ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. It is operated by the

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism The , abbreviated MLIT, is a ministry of the Japanese government.国土交通省設置法 ...

History

Hakodate airport opened in 1961 with a single 1,200 m runway. A new terminal upgrade and runway extension to 2,000 m became operational in 1971. The runway was extended further to 2,500 m in 1978 and to 3,000 m in 1999. A new terminal building opened in 2005. On September 6, 1976, Soviet pilot

Viktor Belenko Viktor Ivanovich Belenko (russian: Виктор Иванович Беленко, born 15 February 1947) is a Russian-born American aerospace engineer and former Soviet pilot who defected in 1976 to the West while flying his MiG-25 jet intercep ...

defected to the West by landing a

MiG-25 Foxbat The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 (russian: Микоян и Гуревич МиГ-25; NATO reporting name: Foxbat) is a supersonic interceptor and reconnaissance aircraft that is among the fastest military aircraft to enter service. Designed by ...

aircraft at Hakodate Airport. On June 21, 1995,

All Nippon Airways Flight 857 All Nippon Airways Flight 857 was a scheduled flight from Tokyo Haneda Airport to Hakodate Airport that was hijacked by a lone individual on June 21, 1995. The aircraft was boarded by police the next morning following an over-night standoff, in t ...

, a scheduled

Boeing 747 The Boeing 747 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner designed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes in the United States between 1968 and 2022. After introducing the 707 in October 1958, Pan Am wanted a jet times its size, t ...

flight from Tokyo to Hakodate, was hijacked by Fumio Kutsumi, a Tokyo bank employee armed with a screwdriver. Kutsumi claimed to be acting on behalf of

Aum Shinrikyo , formerly , is a Japanese doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for the Matsumoto sarin attack the previous year. The group says ...

leader

Shoko Asahara , born , was the founder and leader of the Japanese doomsday cult known as Aum Shinrikyo. He was convicted of masterminding the deadly 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and was also involved in several other crimes. Asahara was sentenced ...

. The aircraft landed in Hakodate and stayed on the runway overnight for 15 hours before riot police stormed the aircraft at dawn and freed the passengers.

Airlines and destinations

Passenger

Statistics

Ground transportation

Scheduled buses operate to

and the Onuma Prince Hotel.

In popular culture

*The animated film '' Detective Conan: Magician of the Silver Sky'' depicts an emergency landing at the airport.

References

External links

Hakodate Airport Terminal Building Co., Ltd.
from

Japan Airlines , also known as JAL (''Jaru'') or , is an international airline and Japan's flag carrier and largest airline as of 2021 and 2022, headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its main hubs are Tokyo's Narita International Airport and Haneda Airport, as w ...

* * {{Portal, Aviation Airports in Hokkaido Buildings and structures in Hakodate Airports established in 1961 1961 establishments in Japan