The Kansai Global Airport boasts a outstanding file because it opened 30 years in the past.
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Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Pictures
Because the summer time commute season starts, 1000’s of luggage will move lacking at airports everywhere the sector. It is a given at this level. However no longer at one specific airport in Japan that makes a shocking declare: it hasn’t ever misplaced a work of bags. Kansai Global Airport opened in September 1994, on a synthetic island in Osaka Bay, and its data state it has maintained a really perfect luggage streak since. That is significantly better than the U.S. can declare, with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics discovering home flights lose 3 million luggage once a year.
Kansai Airport serves the town of Osaka and welcomed just about 14 million passengers final 12 months. It is also no stranger to accolades, having gained a world award for perfect luggage supply 8 instances. For Tsuyoshi Habuta, who oversees luggage operations for one of the crucial dealing with firms at Kansai, the file is a shared milestone. “It calls for accountability and teamwork, and consequently, when the airplane leaves on time, there’s an excellent sense of feat,” he advised NPR thru an interpreter. Habuta has been operating at Kansai Airport for 17 years. He says there are a couple of layers of exams to make sure baggage does not move lacking and that his crew has an exact machine for arranging luggage ahead of a departing flight. But in case you’re in search of a rousing within scoop on Kansai’s luggage operations, you most likely gained’t in finding one. The airport insists there isn’t a secret sauce. “It will be the results of the day by day efforts and cautious paintings of everybody concerned, together with airways and dealing with firms,” airport spokesperson Momoka Wakabayashi mentioned in an electronic mail. “We say sorry if this may be no longer a selected resolution.”
Kansai Airport is anticipating an inflow of vacationers subsequent 12 months.
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Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Pictures
For Habuta, the possibility of dropping luggage merely comes all the way down to proper and flawed. He says it will have to no longer occur as a result of baggage is treasured to passengers. And whilst vacationers would possibly not see him, he nonetheless feels a powerful dedication to their wellbeing.
“It isn’t the type of factor that is within the limelight. It is extra like a behind the scenes function,” Habuta says about his process, including that he has made it his undertaking to stay passengers coming again to the airport. “We’re operating onerous to review and be told extra on a daily basis in order that we will make the passenger satisfied. I truly suppose that is the spirit of Jap hospitality,” he says. A hospitality, he says, this is about thoroughness and an consideration to element.
A type of main points happens when arrival luggage is delivered to the carousel. He says his crew puts every suitcase with the deal with going through outward, in order that passengers can extra simply seize their bag. Subsequent 12 months, Kansai Airport is anticipating the collection of vacationers passing thru to almost triple — to 37 million other folks. Osaka will host the Global Expo in 2025, and is anticipated to attract greater than 20 million guests. Habuta seems unfazed by means of the prospective inflow of extra baggage, and what this implies for the airport’s blank file. “We expect a large number of enlargement of passengers,” he says. “We would like the airport to be a thrilling, lively, vitalized position for everybody to return and use.”
