Tokyo Metropolitan Government runs seven airfields, and Haneda is not one of them. Its port bureau page for metropolitan airports, updated 28 July 2026, lists Chofu Airfield, Tokyo Oshima Kamelia Airport, Niijima Airport, Kozushima Airport, Miyakejima Airport, Hachijojima Airport and the Tokyo Heliport. Haneda sits on a different list, kept by the transport ministry, under the name Tokyo International; the word Haneda does not appear anywhere on that list.
The metropolitan government’s airport page lists seven airfields, and Haneda is not among them
The port bureau’s metropolitan airports page opens with a link list of eleven rows, and seven of those rows are airfields; the other four are topic pages, on designated-use airports, on the review meeting for the island air routes, on airport decarbonisation and on the Oshima hangar rules. Six of the seven airfields are airports, on the mainland at Chofu and on the islands at Oshima, Niijima, Kozushima, Miyakejima and Hachijojima. The seventh is the Tokyo Heliport. The page’s side navigation repeats the same seven headings, each with its own service regulations page; the six airports each add a services page, while the heliport adds pages on landing charges and on its role and noise measures instead. The page prints no telephone number for any airport office: on height limits under Article 49 of the Aviation Act it says only that each airport office should be asked, and that the contact details sit on the individual airport pages.
Ticketing is handled by the airlines rather than by the metropolitan government, and the page names two of them. New Central Airservice flies Chofu to Oshima, Niijima, Kozushima and Miyakejima. All Nippon Airways flies the Hachijojima route, and the page writes its Tokyo end as Tokyo (Haneda). So the metropolitan government’s own island network is reached from two different Tokyo airports, only one of which it runs.
The ministry files Haneda under the name Tokyo International, in a class of nineteen state-managed airports
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism publishes a list of airports dated 1 September 2026. Its top class is the hub airports defined in Article 4, paragraph 1 of the Airport Act, and there are 28 of them, split three ways. Four are company-managed: Narita International, Chubu Centrair, Kansai International and Osaka International. Nineteen are state-managed, and the first name in that group of nineteen is Tokyo International, which is Haneda. Five are specified locally managed airports, set up by the state and managed by a local authority: Asahikawa, Obihiro, Akita, Yamagata and Yamaguchi Ube.
Nothing in the list uses the word Haneda. A traveller looking for Haneda in the ministry’s own inventory has to know that Tokyo International is the entry to read. The ministry adds that restrictions on putting up buildings near state-managed airports can be checked on the websites of the Tokyo and Osaka civil aviation bureaus.
All five of the ministry’s regional airports in the Kanto listing are Tokyo islands
Below the hubs, the ministry lists 54 regional airports under Article 5, paragraph 1, grouped by region. The Kanto group has five entries: Oshima, Niijima, Kozushima, Miyakejima and Hachijojima. Every one of the five is an island airport of Tokyo Metropolis, and the same five appear on the metropolitan government’s own page. The Kanto entry in the national regional-airport class is, on this list, entirely Tokyo’s islands.
That leaves Chofu outside the regional class. The ministry files it under other airports, a class of seven that also holds Nagoya, Tajima, Konan, Amakusa, Oita Kenou and Yao. The Tokyo Heliport is in a different section again, among the twelve public heliports, where it is written as Tokyo Metropolitan Tokyo; Hiroshima and Makurazaki are on the same list of twelve.
Chofu is filed under other airports, and its runway is 800 metres
Chofu Airfield’s own profile page states its type as a land aerodrome in the other airports class, its establisher and manager as Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and its address as 290-3 Nishimachi, Chofu, Tokyo. The reference point is given as 35 degrees 40 minutes 18 seconds north, 139 degrees 31 minutes 41 seconds east, at an elevation of 42.30 metres.
| Item | Figure as published |
|---|---|
| Notified area | 389,546 square metres |
| Landing strip | 920 m by 60 m |
| Runway | 800 m by 30 m |
| Taxiway | 92 m by 18 m |
| Apron | 107,380 square metres |
| Operating hours, weekdays | 8:30 to 17:00 |
| Operating hours, Sundays and public holidays | 10:00 to 17:00 |
The lighting listed is an approach angle indicator and runway end identifier lights, and no other. The page prints no night-time operating window: the last hour on both the weekday and the holiday line is 17:00, so a Chofu departure is a daylight departure whatever the season.
Chofu opened as a public airfield in 1941 and became a formal airport in 2001
The same profile page carries a dated history, and the gap in it is the striking part. Tokyo-fu opened Chofu as a public airfield in April 1941. The US military requisitioned it in September 1945 and used it as a hydroponic farm and an auxiliary airfield. Joint Japanese and American use was approved in August 1954. The airfield area was returned in full in March 1973, after a part return in 1955 and most in 1972.
Scheduled flying began well before the paperwork caught up. The Chofu to Niijima service started in March 1979 and Chofu to Oshima in December 1984. Tokyo took over management of the field from the state in July 1992, and the Chofu to Kozushima service began the same month. The permit to establish the airfield is dated 25 December 1998, and service as a formal airfield, described on the page as a metropolitan commuter airport, began on 31 March 2001. That is fifty-nine years and eleven months after the April 1941 opening, which is our own subtraction of the two dates on the page rather than a figure it prints. Tokyo began its own information service on 1 April 2006, the terminal building opened on 2 April 2013, instrument flight rules came to the island routes on 18 June 2013, and the Chofu to Miyakejima service began on 2 April 2014.
Thirteen scheduled flights a day leave Chofu, and none of them goes to Hachijojima
The scheduled routes page for Chofu prints four lines and a daily frequency against each: three flights a day to Oshima, four to Niijima, three to Kozushima and three to Miyakejima. That is thirteen a day in total, which is our own addition of the four printed figures rather than a number the page states.
Hachijojima is missing from that list, and it is missing for a reason the metropolitan airports page supplies: the Hachijojima service is flown by All Nippon Airways from Haneda, not by New Central Airservice from Chofu. A traveller heading for one Tokyo island therefore starts at a national hub airport, and a traveller heading for the other four starts at a metropolitan commuter airport with an 800 metre runway in the city of Chofu. The two are different airports with different operators, and neither page treats them as interchangeable.
The whole list comes to 97 airports, and the heliports are counted outside it
It helps to see where Tokyo’s seven airfields sit in the national total. The ministry’s list is in two parts, and the first part explicitly excludes heliports and non-public airfields. That first part has four classes, and adding the four printed class totals gives 97 airports; the addition is ours, since the page prints the class figures and not the sum.
- Hub airports, 28: four company-managed, nineteen state-managed, five specified locally managed.
- Regional airports, 54, of which the five Kanto entries are Tokyo’s islands.
- Other airports, 7, one of which is Chofu.
- Shared airports, 8, defined under supplementary provision Article 2, paragraph 1 of the Airport Act and listed as Sapporo, Chitose, Misawa, Hyakuri, Komatsu, Miho, Iwakuni and Tokushima.
The second part of the list is the one that holds the Tokyo Heliport, and it is counted separately: twelve public heliports, 83 non-public heliports and three non-public airfields, the last three being Shikabe, Ryugasaki and Honda Airport. So the Tokyo Heliport does not add to the 97, and a reader who counts airports in Tokyo from the ministry’s list gets seven only if they leave the heliport out and include Haneda.
Two rules on the metropolitan government’s page apply to all seven of its airfields alike. Flying an unmanned aircraft such as a drone near an airport is restricted under the Aviation Act because of the risk to aircraft in flight, permission from the Tokyo Civil Aviation Bureau may be required, and the metropolitan government asks anyone planning it to contact the relevant airport office in advance. Photography is looser: general visitors photographing within the range of personal enjoyment need no procedure at all, while press coverage and corporate shoots must go through the airport or heliport office, and the page publishes its photography rules as PDFs in Japanese and English.
Narita is in the four-airport company-managed class, and its published figures are plan figures
Narita is not in Tokyo. It is one of the four company-managed hub airports in the ministry’s list, and it is operated by Narita International Airport Corporation, whose own page on principal facilities heads five of its sections, namely site area, runways, taxiways, radio navigation aids and apron, with the words overall plan, so those figures are the plan and not today’s state. The planned site area is 2,297 hectares, a figure the page says includes 1,099 hectares of expansion under the further functional enhancement of Narita Airport.
The runway figures carry the same caveat, and one of them carries it explicitly. Runway A is 4,000 m by 60 m. Runway C is 3,500 m by 45 m. Runway B is listed as 3,500 m by 60 m with a note that the current state is 2,500 m by 60 m, so the difference between plan and present is printed on the page for that one runway only. The plan also sets taxiways of about 38.3 km at widths of 30 m, 25 m and 23 m, four ILS installations and one VOR/DME, and an apron of about 294 hectares.
The passenger and cargo sections carry no overall plan heading. Narita’s passenger side is listed as three facilities, with floor areas of about 464,000 square metres for Terminal 1, about 396,000 for Terminal 2 and about 110,000 for Terminal 3. Its cargo side is listed as 22 facilities, with cargo terminal buildings covering about 341,000 square metres. The page notes that Terminals 1, 2 and 3 all include domestic as well as international functions.
How Haneda divides its own flights between its terminals is a separate question, and we have set out the split in Haneda Airport terminal by terminal.
Sources Checked
Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Bureau of Port and Harbor — metropolitan airports page, updated 28 July 2026
Confirmed that the page’s link list has eleven rows of which seven are airfields, namely Chofu Airfield, Tokyo Oshima Kamelia Airport, Niijima Airport, Kozushima Airport, Miyakejima Airport, Hachijojima Airport and the Tokyo Heliport, that Haneda is not listed as one of them, that New Central Airservice flies Chofu to Oshima, Niijima, Kozushima and Miyakejima, that All Nippon Airways flies the Hachijojima route with its Tokyo end written as Tokyo (Haneda), that the page prints no telephone number for any airport office and refers the reader to the individual airport pages for contact details, that unmanned aircraft use near the airports is restricted under the Aviation Act with permission from the Tokyo Civil Aviation Bureau possibly required and each airport office to be contacted in advance, and that photography by general visitors within the range of personal enjoyment needs no procedure while press and corporate shoots must contact the airport or heliport office, with the rules published as Japanese and English PDFs.
https://www.kouwan.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/rito/tmg-airport
Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Bureau of Port and Harbor — Chofu Airfield profile
Confirmed the type as a land aerodrome in the other airports class, the establisher and manager as Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the address as 290-3 Nishimachi, Chofu, the reference point of 35 degrees 40 minutes 18 seconds north and 139 degrees 31 minutes 41 seconds east at 42.30 metres elevation, the notified area of 389,546 square metres, the landing strip of 920 m by 60 m, the runway of 800 m by 30 m, the taxiway of 92 m by 18 m, the apron of 107,380 square metres, the lighting as approach angle indicator and runway end identifier lights, operating hours of 8:30 to 17:00 on weekdays and 10:00 to 17:00 on Sundays and public holidays, and the dated history from the April 1941 opening by Tokyo-fu through the September 1945 requisition, the August 1954 joint use, the March 1973 full return with part in 1955 and most in 1972, the March 1979 Niijima service, the December 1984 Oshima service, the July 1992 transfer of management and Kozushima service, the 25 December 1998 establishment permit, the 31 March 2001 start of service as a formal metropolitan commuter airport, the 1 April 2006 information service, the 2 April 2013 terminal opening, the 18 June 2013 introduction of instrument flight rules and the 2 April 2014 Miyakejima service. The page prints no total for the gap between the 1941 opening and the 2001 start of formal service; fifty-nine years and eleven months is our own subtraction.
https://www.kouwan.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/rito/tmg-airport/chofu/choufu_gaiyou
Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Bureau of Port and Harbor — Chofu Airfield scheduled air routes
Confirmed the four printed route lines and the daily frequency against each, namely Chofu to Oshima three a day, Chofu to Niijima four a day, Chofu to Kozushima three a day and Chofu to Miyakejima three a day, and that Hachijojima is not one of the four. Adding the four to reach thirteen a day is our own arithmetic.
https://www.kouwan.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/rito/tmg-airport/chofu/teikikoukuuro
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism — list of airports, dated 1 September 2026
Confirmed the 28 hub airports made up of four company-managed airports named as Narita International, Chubu Centrair, Kansai International and Osaka International, nineteen state-managed airports of which Tokyo International is the first listed, and five specified locally managed airports named as Asahikawa, Obihiro, Akita, Yamagata and Yamaguchi Ube; the 54 regional airports with the Kanto group listed as Oshima, Niijima, Kozushima, Miyakejima and Hachijojima; the seven other airports listed as Chofu, Nagoya, Tajima, Konan, Amakusa, Oita Kenou and Yao; the twelve public heliports including Tokyo Metropolitan Tokyo, Hiroshima and Makurazaki; the eight shared airports listed as Sapporo, Chitose, Misawa, Hyakuri, Komatsu, Miho, Iwakuni and Tokushima; the 83 non-public heliports; and the three non-public airfields listed as Shikabe, Ryugasaki and Honda Airport. Adding the four class totals of 28, 54, 7 and 8 to reach 97 airports is our own arithmetic.
https://www.mlit.go.jp/koku/15_bf_000310.html
Narita International Airport Corporation — principal facilities and development plan
Confirmed that the site area, runway, taxiway, radio navigation aid and apron sections are each headed overall plan while the passenger and cargo sections are not; the planned site area of 2,297 hectares including 1,099 hectares of expansion, Runway A at 4,000 m by 60 m, Runway B at 3,500 m by 60 m with a current state of 2,500 m by 60 m, Runway C at 3,500 m by 45 m, taxiways of about 38.3 km at widths of 30 m, 25 m and 23 m, four ILS and one VOR/DME installation, an apron of about 294 hectares, three passenger terminals at about 464,000, 396,000 and 110,000 square metres each including domestic and international functions, and 22 cargo facilities with cargo terminal buildings of about 341,000 square metres.
https://www.narita-airport.jp/ja/company/airport-operation/about-layout/
Last updated: September 2026
