OSAKA — Fourteen years after opening and a year after its second runway was completed, Kansai airport is still struggling to survive as canceled flights and political clashes with local and central government officials leave the airport's future up in the air.
Since opening on Sept. 4, 1994, the number of flights annually has fluctuated, dropping to a low of 100,000 in 2003 and then rising to about 129,000 in 2007, thanks primarily to an aggressive marketing campaign in China and Asia that has attracted more passenger and cargo flights.
The number of passengers, however, has remained fairly constant since 2002, when nearly 17 million people used the airport. In 2007, that dropped to about 16.7 million.