Những công trình nổi tiếng thế giới | Sân bay Quốc tế Kansai - Osaka - Nhật Bản #videohonvietbiz #congtrinhkientructhegioi

Where do you land a plane in a place that's run out of space? Japan's answer, Kansai International Airport. A floating megastructure built to withstand the wrath of Mother Nature up above, but what about down below? Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for takeoff to an amazing island airport in the land of the rising sun that may be destined to sink back into the sea. This is Osaka, the ancient capital of Japan, a former playground for the last samurai, now conquered by a generation that dances to the beat of their own drum. Home to 2.6 million people, a new energy in Osaka has propelled this place to become the commercial and industrial centre of western Japan. But in order to compete with their big sister Tokyo, Osaka needed to find a way to bring in more people, with a yen for big business. Their answer, a much bigger airport to open up the skies. But government officials wrestled with a question of sumo proportion. Exactly where do you put a new airport large enough to meet demands of the day, without the noise pollution that has spoiled many a backyard gathering? Let's not forget, Japan's an island the size of California, and this area is partially mountainous and so heavily populated that trying to find a big flat slab of open land in Osaka is like trying to negotiate armrest space on a crowded 747. So instead of moving mountains, officials decided to climb one, creating a plan to build an airport unlike any other. Their earth-shattering decision? If there's no room to land planes on shore, why not have them land offshore, on another island? Only thing is, they had to build it first. In 1987, construction of the world's biggest man-made island of its time broke ground, or water, 18 metres deep in the middle of Osaka Bay. Seven years later, the world had its first international airport, floating out in the middle of the sea all by itself. A true oasis for pilots. That was 10 years ago that I was flying from Honolulu to Kansai. Then I remember vividly now that as I was, you know, far distant from the airport, I was able to see the airport itself. It was an amazing experience to see that, you know. It's like, wow, it's a man-made, you know, island with a runway on it. It's like a jewel in a black hole. It's fabulous when you see the lights. Not because, oh my gosh, there it is, but it's really beautiful. It's actually quite nice because there's no, you know, obstacles. It's out in the middle, so out in the middle of the water, so you don't have to worry about hitting anything coming in. Well, anything except the runway. It's Kansai International Airport, now one of Japan's busiest air hubs, handling more than 300,000 passengers a week, open 24 hours a day. Recognised by the world as one of the most incredible engineering marvels of the 20th century, and compared to megastructures like the Hoover Dam and the Panama Canal, Kansai was built five kilometres from shore and contains 530 hectares of landfill, making a massive rectangle that's more than four kilometres long and 1,200 metres wide. That's big enough to swallow up the entire downtown area of Osaka. Connected to the mainland by the world's longest two-tiered bridge, Kansai welcomes 55,000 planes a year, a unique experience for both pilots and passengers, making what appears to be a liquid landing. As we approached first, I thought it might be like landing onto the aircraft carrier or something like that, but actually it was not. The water always looks much closer as you're diving down into the airport, and so, yeah, that's pretty scary. At night time, there's not much visual cue because there's not much light around other than right at the airport, so they kind of call that a black hole airport. Building this black hole airport created a real-life parting of the seas and truly was a construction project of biblical proportions. It's the largest public works undertaking of the 20th century, costing a total of 15 billion US dollars. With over a million workers putting in 10 million hours of manpower. I felt like I had been in a battle every day. Would it work out when it was finally done? It works in the drawing, but would it work in reality? That was constantly on my mind and it was very stressful. Think that was stressful? Try going to work wearing a hard hat and a life jacket, kind of stuff you want to top off with an airport runway. That's more like landing a 360 metric tonne jumbo jet on a huge plate of tofu. To solve the squishy problem, Kansai's engineers turned to a new sand draining technique to actually speed up the sinking by sucking the water out of the sand and shoring up the airport's foundation. But would all this talk of settling suck the life out of the project instead? Or was it already on autopilot? Too late to go back to the drawing board. We've always had faith in our engineering and that's been a backbone of the project. Confident in their techniques, Kansai engineers set aside any of their own sinking feelings and moved onward and upward with a plan to beat the sinking by throwing several extra feet of fill on top for good measure. And with that, the six-year process began. First, an 11 kilometre sea wall of concrete blocks outlined the shape of things to come. Think of it as building the lip around the edge of a swimming pool. Only this immense enclosure keeps the water on the outside. Then, 80 barges ploughed in, dumping 180 million cubic metres of landfill inside the sea wall. That's enough to build the Great Pyramid of Giza 70 times over. Using the technology of the time, builders monitored and measured the layering of the land, making sure the fill was compacting at an even rate to prevent uneven sinking. And just as the face of the island started to pop out of the water, construction began simultaneously on two major airport landmarks. Kansai's passenger terminal proved to be an architectural conundrum that stumped even the best builders. The terminal had to be light enough to keep settling to a minimum, but what kind of fat-free materials would be strong enough to withstand Mother Nature's frequent visits, bringing typhoons and earthquakes to the area? Enter world-renowned architect Renzo Piano, the guy who gave us France's controversial Pompidou Centre. You know, that brightly coloured building with the insides on the outside. Piano proposed a design that would keep everybody at Kansai happy. Engineers, builders and pooped-out passengers at the gate. His baby? A wing-shaped terminal made of steel and reinforced glass. Exactly one mile long, Kansai's signature structure is one of the largest single-room buildings in the world. The next crucial challenge in completing this airport was the ultimate question of access. If you stick an airport out in the middle of the water, how on earth do you get delivery trucks packed with peanuts and minivans loaded with luggage in and out efficiently? The answer came along with the construction of the SkyGate Bridge. With the use of floating cranes, workers built each of the bridge's piers one at a time, cementing the pieces together like giant toy building blocks. Today, it's the world's longest double-decker truss bridge. At 3,750 metres long, it carries six lanes of traffic on top and two trains below. Just high enough for boats to pass under, yet low enough for jets to fly over. Finally, after seven long years of drilling, dumping and designing on what seemed to be a wing and a prayer, this aerodynamic airport opened for business on September 4, 1994. And in the first month alone, 10,000 people a day came to the airport, and they weren't going anywhere. They just wanted to witness the pie-in-the-sky plan that finally became a reality. We were very anxious to see if it would all work perfectly here. I was so excited when the first flight flew in and everything worked. A million workers, over 200 million metric tons of materials, 10 million hours of hard labour, reclaiming the sea and opening up the skies to a bright future coming in for a landing. I have nothing but admiration for what they've provided for us here. But as much as pilots admire Kansai, you can't land a jumbo jet on a runway that's sinking into the ocean. In its first years of operation, Kansai International Airport fulfilled its promise to become a new gateway to Asia, flying high with thousands of travellers impressed by Kansai's audacious engineering. Well, I've been admiring the construction necessity, first to create the island and then to put all of this tremendous construction on it. It's a tremendous logistic challenge, I'm sure. However, when the dust from this massive construction project finally settled, word began to spread that something else did too. So the airport was sinking the islands, dropping into the water. And dropping a little faster than planners had planned. During construction, the sand draining appeared to take care of strengthening the bay's first level of soft soil, helping to accelerate any potential sinking. But it would be the deeper stuff, the soil they couldn't drain, that would soon become a problem. That deeper stuff is called diluvium soil. Because there weren't any published reports about how that type of soil settles on the bottom of the sea, engineers had to try to estimate the degree of settling that would occur. By 1999, on Kansai's fifth birthday, it became apparent that the guesstimating was way off, as the entire island had already sunk over eight metres, ageing the airport 40 years ahead of schedule. The two major questions officials had to be asking themselves, would the sinking stop there? And what does all this business down below mean for the structures up above? Deep in the bowels of the high-tech terminal lies a somewhat low-tech solution to try and win the battle between Mother Nature and Father Time. To help save the structure from splitting at the seams, cracking under the pressure caused by uneven settling, engineers give a little lift to the 900 giant support columns that hold the terminal building up. It's a simple system you'll understand if you've ever changed a flat tyre before. First, each column is equipped with a sensor that's connected to a computerised system. When the island shifts, the system signals where the power lifting must take place and technicians rush in. Next, hydraulic jacks, each capable of lifting 300 tonnes, are inserted between the floor and the column in question. Then, the huge support is lifted and metal plates are added, one at a time, to raise the height of the upper floors back to level once again. It's a delicate game of balance that's a little like sliding a book of matches underneath a wobbly table to keep your sake from spilling. When this jacking up procedure is done, the basement floor remains at the same level while the first floor moves up. But when you raise the roof on a 2.7 million metric tonne building, things in the basement might start to look a little strange. So steps were taken to keep things on the up and up, literally. For example, double walls were installed that hang from the first floor. When the floor is jacked up, the walls follow suit. Also in the basement, air conditioning ducts are bolted to the ceiling, not the floors, keeping wires and hoses from pulling apart as the building grows. Staircases from the first floor get an extra step or two added to the bottom. And on the first floor, passengers are probably not even aware these metal plates at the bottom of each escalator keeps them from tripping on the trippy change in levels. But just how long can this terminal continue to be propped up, defying the laws of gravity? If the whole island keeps getting lower, is the basement only one typhoon away from waves crashing in? According to Kansai officials, the soil settling is slowing down significantly. In turn, that means the uneven sinking is becoming much less frequent. In fact, airport engineers say the sinking has slowed to just five centimeters a year, as opposed to the five centimeters a month it declined during construction. I believe that we've solved the problem, but you never know until it's done. So the airport won't go down without a fight, even if Sir Isaac Newton may be in the other corner. But if the uneven settling isn't settled and continues to mess with the airport's foundation, forget about the buildings, what about the runway? Without it, there is no airport. Since it's settling evenly, the entire runway is getting lower. But it's not a problem as long as it's flat. It's settling evenly and keeping the same angle, which is what matters. No problem at all. It's not sinking that fast. So, you know, they'll have the other runway up before this one's underwater. I'm not worried. And so the secret's out. The Kansai engineering team is so confident in their triumph over the ocean, they're actually at it again, building a second island with a second runway. But before that fantasy island becomes a reality, how do passengers feel about the possibility of this runway being pulled out from underneath them? We think we're confident in Japanese engineers, that they'd have all that covered. We're more concerned about, I think, earthquakes than the island actually sinking. And from what I hear, it's structurally designed to prevent any major damage from earthquakes. And actually, he's right. As if they weren't already on shaky ground, Kansai sits in the middle of that volatile vortex of natural disasters called the Pacific Rim of Fire, home to earthquakes, tidal waves, and some of the worst weather on the planet. We have frequent typhoons and earthquakes in this country. Those factors were taken fully into consideration during the design phase. And it's a good thing, too, because in 1995, with the airport only open for 15 months, an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale hit the nearby city of Kobe, the epicenter just 29 kilometers from the airport island. We didn't have any glass damaged by the earthquake. We found some small cracks, but not the slightest bit of severe damage. While the city of Kobe was devastated, the advanced structural design of Kansai's terminal building stood strong, perhaps proving to Kansai critics that all those ground preparations are propping up for a day. Thousands of passengers pile onto this floating metropolis, becoming part of a round-the-clock rush hour. It was quite a drive from downtown Osaka to get out here. But it's pretty amazing. Because all roads don't lead to Kansai, actually just one, planners designed a myriad of mass transportation to bring both workers and passengers to the airport from all over western Japan. It's a commuter's dream, and not a smelly cab in sight. Futuristic bullet trains like the Nankai Rapito move you in minutes to Osaka, traveling in style. Japan Railway's metro trains make several convenient stops for commuters who work at Kansai. High-speed ferries bring air travelers from Kobe across the bay. And let's not forget the luxury taxis or the over 20 limousine bus lines that serve Kansai. It is convenient because I use every time this airport limousine to get from Kobe to here. To keep an eye on all of these modes of transportation, Kansai's state-of-the-art traffic center is armed with over 40 remote-control cameras. These omnipresent eyes enable officers to monitor and manage everything from traffic jams to emergency situations. But patrolling the roadways at Kansai is really a drop in the bucket compared to protecting the waterways around it. Kansai Airport is surrounded by vast miles of open sea that feed directly into the Pacific Ocean. To keep that secure, airport officials call in the big guns. The Japanese Coast Guard is on duty all day and all night. With their own airport outpost, Coast Guard search and rescue boats keep tabs on traffic in Osaka Bay. Akiyoshi Kabuki heads up the water patrol. The area around the airport is a regular route for fishing boats. We also have pleasure boats with people enjoying their leisure time. If we spot a suspicious boat, our boat will immediately approach the vessel and will question the crew members over the loudspeaker. And in an age with terrorists targeting aircraft, securing the sea is the Coast Guard's number one priority. 9-11 was such a tragic event. Since the incident, we have tightened up our security against possible terrorist actions, but I can't disclose any major changes or details on that. While the Japanese Coast Guard protects the airport and its precious cargo by sea, there are several other provisions to protect the airport on land. Every inch of the tarmac and terminal is captured on a huge network of security cameras. Special security officers surround an airplane while it's at the gate, never leaving the big gals alone. And the runway itself is draped in a high-tech security blanket of ultraviolet light that invisibly surrounds the perimeter. If this light beam is broken, security is alerted and called out to investigate the disturbance. Observing from their perch high above the runway, Kansai's air traffic control operators take command, securing the friendly skies, making sure they stay that way with a 360-degree view of things above and below. Assuring that nothing gets lost in translation, controllers converse with pilots from every corner of the world, safely talking them through the ups and downs of the day. But Kansai Control's record speaks for itself. In 10 years, they've amazingly had only one minor mishap. But that doesn't mean they don't get their own share of excitement, because controllers at Kansai have to deal with something they have absolutely no control over. Japan's wild weather. Every year, the Kansai region gets pounded by giant tropical typhoons that can generate winds up to 190 miles per hour, bringing along damaging high tides. Not good for an airport surrounded by water that happens to be sinking. Captain Jeff Linder recounts a close call with one wild storm at Kansai. We arrived, we landed. As you could begin to feel the pressure building, the velocity of the winds were increasing. The barometer was dropping. You knew that it was happening. And by the time we left Kansai on the bus, got to the airport, to the hotel, probably an hour and a half later, the full brunt of the storm was upon the airfield. And it blew for hours and hours. And we knew that our sister airplanes coming in, several had to divert, and the airport was closed for that weather phenomenon for quite a few hours. Helping air traffic controllers steer clear of that kind of disaster are the guys next door in Kansai's 24-hour weather center. Toshifumi Tsutsumi of the Japan Meteorological Agency oversees operations. We observe the weather here and use our instruments to send the data to the control tower. Air traffic controllers guide aircraft based on the information they receive from us. Airport meteorologists visually track the weather and rely on sensitive monitoring equipment to update conditions every 30 minutes. That's especially important when it comes to wrestling with Kansai's wild winds. On a gusty day, this unprotected island can give pilots a run for their money. United Airlines Captain Richard Earhart commands a Boeing 777 to Kansai on a regular basis. When you put an airport in a bay like this, you're going to get winds that vary. As we came down, we had winds that were like 20... They'd be 20 knots off our right wing and then it'd be maybe up by the nose, 8 or 10 knots, and then coming back, the rear, maybe also the supporting tail went 19 knots. The varying winds beneath their wings keep pilots on their toes and the weather and traffic controllers on their feet. But while turbulent weather is always on the radar here at Kansai, safety is too, and everyone proudly plays a part in that, from the tower to the tarmac. If you think of Kansai International as a real city on the sea, then the main drag is its 3,000-metre runway, an asphalt welcome mat to over 150 planes a day. Maintaining this special stretch of road is vital to the airport's entire operation. One pothole, one broken light on this major artery, and business can shut down. But finding time for runway maintenance can be tricky on a runway that's open around the clock. So the work is done at night, in between flights, when it's easier to spot that one problem light out of the 5,000 that dot the runway. And if you're already thinking, ouch, that's some sky-high electricity bill, you're right. Kansai lights up the sky and the entire island to the tune of US$37,000 a month. But there's no power struggle here. Airport planners built their own utility facility. The Kansai power plant makes sure nobody's left in the dark. And while we're on the subject of juice, providing jet fuel is a basic necessity at any airport and a unique challenge for one surrounded by water with no connection to the mainland. But here's one place where an island is ideal. At Kansai's fuel supply centre, located just off the runway, huge 4,000-tonne tanker ships can pull right in, park it and pump. The centre has four piers for tankers to dock and unload. Jet fuel gets sent from these berths all the way across the island for storage in these huge supply tanks, stashing enough to fuel jets for seven full days. Now, we all know handling jet fuel can be a pretty explosive situation, especially if you're considering putting pipes under a sinking island. But Kansai's fuel management team had safety in mind from the start. Anticipating the sinking and a few earthquakes now and then, they designed these special serpentine delivery pipes with flexible joints, preventing any tearing or leaking as the ground moves. It's a swift and safe system, pumping fuel underneath and around the runway to jets waiting to gas up and go. You've seen how Kansai covers what goes into the planes, but how about what comes out? I'm the director of this facility, which is called the Clean Centre. Kansai's Clean Centre is a one-of-a-kind incineration plant, handling all the trash coming off the planes and out of the terminal. Their mission? Keep it clean and green. We supervise the entire operation of the Clean Centre here. One of our jobs is to minimise the amount of trash here. We also try to recycle as much as possible. Air travel in itself can be a harrowing experience, and we're not talking about the part that's 10,000 metres in the air. Juggling heavy suitcases, screaming children, long lines, and, well, more long lines, typically means you're tired before you get there. And nobody's even mentioned the extra emotional stress worrying about things like terrorism and SARS. But in Japan's polite, conflict-avoiding culture, finding a way to soothe the tense traveller's inner Godzilla was part of Kansai's master plan. Beneath this one big, shining roof, the world gets to see how the beauty and ingenuity of Japan meets plastic chairs and check-in counters. The design is modern and then has a bit of Japan with, like, these structures, these little ornament things that look like origami. So it's really interesting. Kansai's airy terminal design is a space-saving architectural wonder, stacking arrivals and departures onto four floors, one on top of the other. And it's no mystery why they call the entrance to this place the canyon. At 30 metres high and 300 metres long, you can stand on the bottom and pretty much see everything, floor to ceiling. It's a very unique building, very well organised. The counters are set up A, B, C, D. It's very simple to find, and you can see from one end to the other. And this place is plastered with people-movers. There are 88 escalators and 92 elevators. Plus, from drop-off to departure, only 90 seconds to every gate on board the terminal's wing shuttle that jets you to each end of the big bird. No more feeling like you have to train for a marathon when you travel. From train-spotting to plane-spotting, another unique angle on this megabuilding is the 5,000 windows in the front wall, one giant room with a view and one smart design. The windows are all held in place with flexible joints to stand strong when Mother Nature comes knocking. Of course, that means outfitting an army of people to keep the windows and the rest of this place sparkling, because at Kansai, cleaning is serious business. And people will go way out of their way to help you find where you need to go. In a country that can shrink TVs to the size of a matchbook, you'd expect technology to be oozing at an airport. From top to bottom, this terminal's wired, keeping you logged on, charged up and confident your bags will arrive at the same place you do. Kansai has one of the most advanced baggage control systems in the world. 10,000 pieces pass through here each day. And with the terminal's multi-floor design, that means getting creative when it comes to handling excess baggage with care. This high-tech spiral delivery system maximises precious island space, as your prized possessions snake along this whirly conveyor belt nearly 40 metres tall and 6 metres wide. They're spat out by unique 3D tilt trays and sorted according to destination. Along the way, your bags are tracked and monitored by special electronic tags and cameras, so no suitcase goes missing. Back in baggage control, computers identify problem pieces in the system, where stuck wheels and overstuffed bags send a red alert to technicians who run to the rescue. And if you're travelling without this precious cargo, check out Kansai's newest and proudest addition to their long list of airport amenities. Last year, passengers barked loudly. They wanted a safe, clean and convenient place to leave their pets, while they blast off to destinations unknown. Our customers feel reassured when they come over and meet our staff members. They can take off for their trip knowing that their pet is in good hands. The Cancú Pet Hotel has only been open a couple of months, and already you need a dog-gone reservation weeks in advance. Because this hotel staff not only feed, bathe, beautify and exercise your pet, they also put them on TV. Dog trainer and hotel manager Kaori Inahara explains. Each room has a live camera connected to a cell phone. Our customers can rent the phone and have access to real-time images of their pet. Just dial a direct number and instantly your pooch is pictured relaxing and enjoying their own vacation. Once in a while we see pets that are not really willing to leave us when the owner comes to reclaim them. That warms our heart to know that we provided such a comfort for the pets. The signature silhouette of the Kansai terminal caps off a travel experience that seems to fit its unique location in the middle of the sea. It's an airport island paradise for passengers and pilots who sometimes forget they're really there to leave the place behind. So this is just a nice place to see after 11 and a half hour, 15 minute flight to come in and say, great, I like it. And soon with the addition of another runway, Kansai officials hope that pilots from all over the world will have much more to like. In 2004, Kansai International Airport celebrates its 10th year of operation as Japan's new portal to the Pacific, welcoming travellers from around the world. And while 10 years is still considered a kid compared to its older airport siblings like Heathrow and JFK, this artificial horizon may already be experiencing some growing pains that could be a bit premature. Well, we handle the departure and arrivals with a single runway. So that causes some delay. But once you have the second runway, you will use the one runway for arrivals exclusively. Early comparisons to other international airports and fears of delays were enough to convince Kansai officials that a second runway was needed to remain competitive in the region. So even though the first runway was barely broken in, they began to address some urgent issues floating to the surface. What if the airplane had an accident on the runway? We need to close the runway so the airport can't operate anymore. You know, you're on a five-mile final, the airplane ahead of you touches down, blows a tyre, can't exit the runway. All of a sudden, here you are, you know, at 2,000 feet above the runway, going, all right, can't go there. How much field do I have and what are my options? From the pilot's perspective, I think it'd be very much beneficial, like rather than having one single runway, but having two runways, which most of the major airport has. It's simple maths. If you double the runways, you double the number of flights. And bringing in 60 jets an hour instead of 30 also means doubling airport revenues. An important point, since the bills from building the first runway have yet to be paid off. The decision appeared to be obvious, and the second runway became an issue of sink or swim. I think the demand for international air travel in this region will increase in the future. We need two runways to respond to this demand. And so that brings us back to the beginning, sort of a deep-water déjà vu, because a new runway meant building a new island out in the middle of Osaka Bay. In July 1999, Kansai Airport launched construction of its second runway, now called Phase 2, expected to be open for business in 2007. Plans for this parallel runway called for a longer landing strip, 500 metres longer than the first, allowing bigger jumbo jets more of a comfort zone for taking off and landing. Located only 200 metres from the first island, this mammoth construction project was in one way old hat for engineers, relying upon lessons learned the first time around. But experience aside, the birth of this new island brought up some issues that no one had notes on. First, the fact that the island was being built even farther out from the mainland. Then, deeper water meant softer soil under the seabed, possibly causing this island to sink nearly six metres more than its neighbour. And finally, a new worry. Would the additional weight of the second island affect the level of the first, possibly causing it to sink even further? We came up with the idea to build the second island 200 metres away from the first one, to prevent the weight effect on the old island. One of the biggest challenges in building the first island was the even distribution of the landfill. Not enough here, too much there, could mean an uneven rate of settling. And with an even bigger island, evening out 250 million cubic metres of mountain sand was like climbing Mount Fuji. But in the 12 years since the first large barge dumped its dirt, technology had improved, propelling the landfill positioning from simple radio waves to global satellites, making landfill less of a guessing game. These binoculars were not made for bird watching, but for something else completely new to phase two. This is the Maritime Safety Centre, where a close watch is kept over construction vessels now sharing space with fishing and tour boats, sort of as sea traffic control for the increase in action. Hiroshi Akana is the director of the centre where it's their job to keep the phase two fleet safe from sunup to sundown. The landfill operation isn't conducted during the night, but we operate 24 hours a day. The reason is that the construction site has off-limit areas, which could pose a great danger to vessels entering the area. Akana's team will be on the job until the runway is completed in 2007, when worries over bad weather and fishing boat collisions transfer over to airport facilities management. Until then, he considers it a good day when he can avoid both. I consider it normal when there are no accidents involved with the airport. With all the excitement and activity on the new island, it's almost easy to forget they're doing this just 200 metres away from giant jets packed with people coming in for a landing, which brings up another engineering challenge yet to be tested. Exactly how do you connect the two islands if they're sinking at different speeds? By the time we're ready to open the second island, the airplanes should be able to move from the first island to the second. It might still slope slightly, but the connection will be possible. The new island will still be gradually settling after the opening, but eventually it will be at the same level with the first one. The decision to expand Kansai was made during brighter economic times in Japan, and long before the technology slowdown in the United States. So raising capital for a new addition, while still paying off debt from the first, was almost as difficult as raising an airport out of the sea. Add to that the decline in air travel following 9-11, and flying fears to Asia due to SARS, and you've got some numbers that just don't add up to building a new US$15 billion runway and a terminal to boot. We were prepared to start the construction of the new terminal building upon completion of the landfill, but we're facing some budget issues because the business hasn't picked up. So with the financing for the second phase in question, and travel experts waiting for passenger numbers to rebound, you've got to wonder, is Kansai hanging on too tightly to that Hollywood dream of If you build it, they will come. But while bigger carriers like United are adding service to Kansai, some international airlines have already pulled up stakes. Struggling with the second highest landing fees in the world, US$7,500 for a single Boeing 747 to land at this one-of-a-kind facility. That's nearly five times higher than Los Angeles International. It's an unfortunate dilemma for today's cash-strapped airlines. Landing fees not only reflect number of flights, but also the value of airport property. And that's gold in Japan. But there's no other way to get here. And without passing the extra costs on to passengers, their hands and their wings may be tied, forcing them to increase traffic to cheaper Asian airports in South Korea, Shanghai and Hong Kong. I believe this will be a great airport in 10 or 20 years when the demand increases with a lot more airplanes flying in and out. And they're not just banking on passenger planes. Kansai's hope for staying afloat may be in the goldmine of air cargo transportation, something that makes sense for the shipping mecca this region has become. Last year, nearly 800,000 metric tons of cargo flew in and out of Kansai. And being situated on an island is perfect for large container ships to pull right up and unload, making it attractive to cargo agencies from FedEx to UPS that import and export everything from electronics to eggs. A new, longer runway could be key to retaining and expanding this booming business. And the sooner the better, Kansai faces some stiff competition from two new airports opening in central Japan and Kobe, close enough to sea just across the bay. For all the pressures this new facility faces, the people who have taken this courageous journey remain strong in their belief that Kansai International will continue to soar. I think people will appreciate our effort and will think we've done a great job 20 or 30 years from now. And as time goes on, Kansai officials hope not to be remembered only as Japan's sinking airport, heading in the same direction as the leaning tower of Pisa. We're successfully operating this huge airport facility on a landfill. I'd like the whole world to know about that. So I've covered 30-some-odd countries in the last few years. This is one of the more fascinating airports. Despite enthusiastic passengers who cried Banzai for Kansai and brilliant engineering efforts fighting the forces of physics, will the weight of everything else prove to be too much to survive, sinking Kansai under the burden of huge debts and a bad economy? Only time, and maybe the tides, will tell.