Yamagata Airport guide

Yamagata Airport lies in Higashine, in the Murayama area of Yamagata Prefecture, about 23 km north of Yamagata city. It began as an Imperial Japanese Navy training airfield and opened to civilian flights in June 1964 as Jinmachi Airport. It took its present name in 1965.

The runway was lengthened to 1,500 metres in 1972 and to 2,000 metres in 1981. The current terminal opened in 1984. It has two floors, two boarding gates and a rooftop observation deck. A Japan Ground Self-Defense Force helicopter detachment has shared the field since 1969.

Traffic peaked in 1991. The Yamagata Shinkansen opened in 1992 and pulled many Tokyo passengers onto the train, and the Tokyo route shrank from 470,618 passengers in 1991 to 43,447 in 2002. Today the airport links Yamagata with Tokyo Haneda, Osaka Itami, Sapporo Chitose and Nagoya Komaki. In 2015 it handled 223,111 passengers and 6,858 aircraft movements.