is a

second class airport This is a list of airports in Japan, grouped by classification and sorted by location. As of February 2012, the country has a total of 98 airports, of which 28 are operated by the central government and 67 by local governments.Aoki, Mizuho,Bubble ...

located northeast of

Niigata Station is a major railway station in Chūō-ku, Niigata, Japan, operated by East Japan Railway Company (JR East). The station is at the centre of Niigata city, the largest city on the Sea of Japan coast in Honshu. It forms the central station for the ...

AIS Japan
/ref> in Niigata,

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 n ...

History

The first airport on the

Sea of Japan The Sea of Japan is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, i ...

coast of Japan was opened on an island in the

Shinano River The , known as the in its upper reaches, is the longest and widest river in Japan and the third largest by basin area (behind the Tone River and Ishikari River). It is located in northeastern Honshu, rising in the Japanese Alps and flowing ...

in 1929. This airport was moved to what was then the village of Matsugazakahama in 1930, and was renamed Niigata Airport. It was requisitioned for use by the

Imperial Japanese Army Air Force The Imperial Japanese Army Air Service (IJAAS) or Imperial Japanese Army Air Force (IJAAF; ja, 大日本帝國陸軍航空部隊, Dainippon Teikoku Rikugun Kōkūbutai, lit=Greater Japan Empire Army Air Corps) was the aviation force of the Im ...

in 1941, and came under the control of the

USAAF The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

after the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. It was returned to Japanese civilian control on March 31, 1958, on which date commercial flight operations were resumed. International services were started in 1973, with scheduled service to

Khabarovsk Khabarovsk ( rus, Хабaровск, a=Хабаровск.ogg, r=Habárovsk, p=xɐˈbarəfsk) is the largest city and the administrative centre of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia,Law #109 located from the China–Russia border, at the confluence of ...

and Niigata Airport became historically an important gateway for traffic to and from

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

, which among other purposes were used to export Niigata-area agricultural products to Russia; however, flights were reduced from winter 2010 as more slots became available for Russia service at

Narita International Airport Narita International Airport ( ja, 成田国際空港, Narita Kokusai Kūkō) , also known as Tokyo-Narita, formerly and originally known as , is one of two international airports serving the Greater Tokyo Area, the other one being Haneda Airpo ...

near

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...

. The airport saw several major service expansions in the spring of 2012, when

China Eastern Airlines China Eastern Airlines Corporation Limited (), also known as China Eastern, is an airline headquartered in the China Eastern Airlines Building, on the grounds of Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport in Changning District, Shanghai. It i ...

Fuji Dream Airlines is a Japanese regional airline headquartered in Shimizu-ku, Shizuoka, Shizuoka Prefecture. It operates a fleet of Embraer E-Jets with three main hubs at Shizuoka Airport, Nagoya Airfield and Kobe Airport. The airline commenced operations on J ...

and

All Nippon Airways , also known as ANA (''Ē-enu-ē'') or is an airline in Japan. Its headquarters are located in Shiodome City Center in the Shiodome area of Minato ward of Tokyo. It operates services to both domestic and international destinations and had m ...

announced service to Shanghai, Nagoya and Narita respectively.

Airlines and destinations

The following destinations are served from Niigata:

Ground transportation

Airport Limousine Bus Niigata Station South 201903

Scheduled "limousine bus" service is provided to and from

every 20 minutes and heavily subsidized by

Niigata Prefecture is a prefecture in the Chūbu region of Honshu of Japan. Niigata Prefecture has a population of 2,227,496 (1 July 2019) and is the fifth-largest prefecture of Japan by geographic area at . Niigata Prefecture borders Toyama Prefecture and ...

. Niigata Airport currently has no direct rail access, although regional authorities have conducted studies aimed at potentially extending the Joetsu Shinkansen high-speed rail line or other nearby ordinary rail lines to the airport.

References

External links

Official website

Niigata Airport Building
{{niigata-geo-stub Airports in Japan Transport in Niigata Prefecture Buildings and structures in Niigata (city) 1929 establishments in Japan Airports established in 1929