New Chitose Airport
Facts on CTS
The airport's original IATA code was SPK, for Sapporo. SPK was later reassigned as a city code covering both this airport and the smaller Okadama Airport in central Sapporo, and the airport itself took CTS, from Chitose.
Source: Wikipedia
The city that gives the airport its name was called shikot in Ainu, meaning a big depression or hollow, as in nearby Lake Shikotsu, a caldera lake. In Japanese the word sounded too much like "dead bones", so it was changed to Chitose.
Source: Wikipedia
The "New" separates it from Chitose Air Base next door, which was Hokkaido's main civil airport until 1988. Flying at Chitose goes back to 1926, when villagers donated a 10-hectare field for the Otaru Shimbun newspaper's "Hokkai One" flight.
Source: Wikipedia
New Chitose became Japan's first 24-hour airport in 1994 and is one of six today, and the only inland one. To limit noise, traffic between 10 pm and 7 am is capped at six flights: four passenger services to Tokyo and two cargo runs.
Source: Wikipedia
Because the airport shares air traffic control with the adjoining Chitose Air Base, daytime civil operations are limited to 32 takeoffs and landings an hour, and international flights are only permitted inside set windows across the week.
Source: Wikipedia
Chitose Air Base next door flies F-15 Eagles and houses the Japanese government's own transport aircraft. The two fields keep separate runways joined by taxiways, and the base's strips are sometimes borrowed when winter weather shuts New Chitose's.
Source: Wikipedia
The 819 km hop between Sapporo and Tokyo Haneda is the second-busiest air route in the world, carrying 12.1 million passengers in 2025. The airport itself served 23.7 million passengers in 2018, fifth-busiest in Japan.
Source: Wikipedia
The domestic terminal is a semicircle with eighteen gates, an arrangement reminiscent of the curved terminals at Dallas Fort Worth. A separate international terminal on the west side has eight gates and opened for service on 26 March 2010.
Source: Wikipedia
Few airports are this happy to detain you: the domestic terminal holds a hot spa, a cinema complex, museums and a 188-room hotel. Skytrax ranked it 49th in the world in 2024, up from 102nd, and named it the most improved airport.
Source: Wikipedia