Departure
95%
vs 95%
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Oita Airport is a coastal international airport on reclaimed land off the Kunisaki Peninsula in Oita Prefecture, Japan, serving as the main air gateway to the Ōita City area. Its single long runway, ILS approach and offshore setting make it a distinctive and useful reference point for VFR pilots operating along the Kyushu coastline.
Oita Airport (ICAO: RJFO, IATA: OIT) is an international airport built on reclaimed coastal waters off the Kunisaki Peninsula in Kunisaki City, Ōita Prefecture, Japan. It serves the city of Ōita, some 16 nautical miles to the southwest, and handles a substantial mix of domestic and international scheduled airline traffic. For a visiting VFR pilot the airport is notable for its offshore construction, its single very long runway equipped with ILS, and its role as a busy regional airline hub with ongoing ambitions to develop as a spaceport.
The airport sits on reclaimed land on the Kunisaki Peninsula, on the coast of Ōita Prefecture on the Japanese island of Kyushu, roughly 16 nautical miles (30 km) northeast of Ōita City. As a medium-sized airport handling scheduled airline traffic, it is served by approach and departure control alongside its own tower and ground frequencies, indicating controlled airspace around the field appropriate to its traffic levels.
Oita Airport has a single physical runway, 01/19, of 9,814 ft (3,000 m), with a hard surface and runway lighting. An ILS approach is available to runway 01.
Pilots can expect the following services and frequencies at Oita: Approach (APP) on 120.6 MHz, ATIS on 127.8 MHz, Departure (DEP) on 119.05 MHz, Ground (GND) on 121.6 MHz, and Tower (TWR) on 118.8 MHz. An ILS is available for runway 01, supporting instrument approaches to the field.
The airport's offshore, reclaimed-land setting on the Kunisaki Peninsula, jutting into the sea off the Kyushu coast, makes it a readily identifiable landmark from the air, distinct from the built-up area of Ōita City to the southwest.
Oita Airport opened in 1971 as New Oita Airport, replacing an earlier Oita Airport within Oita City itself. That original airport was closed following a fatal accident on 22 February 1964, when a Fuji Airlines Convair CV-240 operating as Flight 902 from Kagoshima overran the runway on landing and fell into the dried-up Urakawa River, killing 20 of the 42 people on board; the accident was attributed to pilot error compounded by the poor runway structure of the old field, and a memorial to the victims stands at the site of the former runway today. The present airport, built on reclaimed coastal waters, has grown into a significant regional hub, and in 2018 handled around 2.1 million passengers. More recently, Oita Prefecture pursued plans with Virgin Orbit to develop the airport as Japan's first spaceport for horizontal orbital launches; although Virgin Orbit went bankrupt in 2023, the prefecture has stated its intention to continue spaceport development. On 28 January 2024 a HondaJet on a training flight overshot the runway on landing and came to a stop on nearby grass, closing the airport for at least an hour and causing the cancellation of four flights, though none of the three occupants was injured.
Oita Airport continues to operate as a busy scheduled airline gateway, with domestic services to Tokyo Haneda, Tokyo Narita, Osaka Itami, and Nagoya Centrair, and international links to Seoul Incheon and Taipei Taoyuan among others. The airport is connected to Ōita City by bus, and a hovercraft service between the airport and the city, discontinued in 2009, was reintroduced and began regular operation again in July 2025, cutting the journey to around 35 minutes compared with about an hour by road. The field remains under active development consideration as a potential spaceport site.