Departure
96%
vs 95%
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Chofu Airport is a small public airfield on the western edge of Tokyo, administered by the Bureau of Port and Harbor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. It is best known as the base for New Central Airservice's commuter flights out to the Izu Islands, and for its long association with Japanese aviation research through JAXA's Chofu Aerospace Center. For a simulator pilot it offers an interesting slice of Tokyo's aviation history packed into a compact, single-runway field.
Chofu Airport is a public airfield in western Tokyo operated by the Bureau of Port and Harbor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. It serves as the hub for New Central Airservice's scheduled commuter services to the Izu Islands, and hosts a mix of general aviation, aerospace research and rotary-wing operators, making it a compact but characterful destination for a VFR flight around the Greater Tokyo Area.
The airfield lies about 1.2 nautical miles (2.2 km) northwest of the town of Chofu, in Tokyo Prefecture, to the west of central Tokyo. It sits within the dense airspace and urban sprawl of the Greater Tokyo Area, close to JAXA's Chofu Aerospace Center, which shares the site.
Chofu has a single physical runway, 17/35, of hard surface construction and roughly 2,588 ft (588 ft on the 17 threshold figure, 2,587 ft on 35) in length. There is no ILS approach available at the field.
No published communications frequencies are listed for Chofu Airport, and there is no ILS or other instrument approach aid at the field, so operations here are conducted under visual conditions with appropriate local procedures.
Two preserved wartime concrete aircraft hangars stand in a small park immediately to the east of the airport, a useful ground reference when approaching from that side. JAXA's Chofu Aerospace Center, adjoining the airfield, is another distinctive landmark, along with the terminal's observation deck and the mounds and platforms in nearby parks from which the airfield can be viewed.
Plans for an airfield at Chofu were drawn up in 1938, with construction beginning the following year and the airport opening in 1941. It originally had two runways, one of 1,000 metres and one of 675 metres. Although conceived as a public airport, the outbreak of the Second World War saw it taken over exclusively by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service, which based Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien fighters there for the air defence of Tokyo against Boeing B-29 Superfortress raids. In 1944 concrete hangars were built to shelter aircraft from air attack; two of these survive today in a small park to the east of the current airport. After the war the airfield was occupied by American forces, briefly serving from late September 1945 as a base for Lockheed F-5 Lightning photo-reconnaissance aircraft of the 6th and 71st Reconnaissance Groups, which mapped wartime damage across Honshu until the mapping flights ended in January 1946. With no further military requirement, and given its proximity to a dense urban area, the airfield passed to the occupation government in 1946. It was returned to Japanese control in 1972 under the Kanto Plain Consolidation Plan, which saw several US military facilities in the Tokyo area handed back in exchange for upgrades to Yokota Air Base, and the nearby Kanto Mura military housing complex followed in 1974. Public commercial air service began in 1979 with flights to Niijima. The airfield has also been the scene of notable incidents, including a 1976 light-aircraft attack on the house of organised-crime figure Yoshio Kodama, a fatal 1980 crash into a school playground shortly after take-off, and a fatal 2015 Piper PA-46 Malibu crash into a nearby residential area moments after departure.
Chofu today is used by a number of operators including Aerotec, Jamco, Toho Air Service, Tokyo Airlines and New Central Airservice, the last of which runs the airport's principal commercial service, connecting Tokyo with Kozushima, Miyakejima, Niijima and Oshima in the Izu Islands. The airfield is also closely tied to Japanese aerospace research, hosting the headquarters of JAXA and its Chofu Aerospace Center. As with many Japanese airports, the terminal building includes a public observation deck for viewing airfield operations.