is an international airport on an artificial island in Ise Bay, Tokoname City in Aichi Prefecture, south of Nagoya in central Japan. Centrair is classified as a first class airport and is the main international gateway for the Chubu ("central") region of Japan. The name is an abbreviation of Central Japan International Airport, an alternate translation used in the English name of the airport's operating company, . 10.2 million people used the airport in 2015, ranking 8th busiest in the nation, and 208,000 tons of cargo was moved in 2015. History Chubu Centrair serves the third largest metropolitan area in Japan, centered around the city of Nagoya. The region is a major manufacturing centre, with the headquarters and production facilities of Toyota Motor Corporation and production facilities for Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation. With much lobbying by local business groups such as Toyota, especially for 24-hour cargo flights, construction started August 2000, with a budget of JPY¥768 billion (€5.5 billion, US$7.3 billion), but through efficient management nearly ¥100 billion was saved. Penta-Ocean Construction was a major contractor. According to Japanese media sources, Kodo-kai, a Yakuza faction in the Yamaguchi-gumi group, earned an immense amount of money by being the sole supplier, via a front company called Samix, of dirt, rock, sand, and gravel for the airport construction project. Although several Samix executives were criminally indicted for racketeering, the prosecutions were later dropped. According to the sources, Kodo-kai had informants working within the Nagoya police who fed the organization inside information which allowed them to stay a step ahead of investigating authorities. When Chubu Centrair opened on 17 February 2005, it took over almost all of the existing Nagoya Airport's (now Nagoya Airfield) commercial flights, and relieved Tokyo and Kansai areas of cargo shipments. As a replacement for Nagoya Airport, it also inherited its IATA airport code NGO. The airport opened in time to service the influx of visitors for Expo 2005, located near Nagoya. Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura announced in December 2021 that two new runways were planned at the airport: a 3,290 m parallel runway to the east of the existing runway, to be completed in 2027, and a 3,500 m runway on the west side of the airport, which would replace the existing runway. Route withdrawals There were several withdrawals from Chubu Centrair after the airport commenced its operation. American Airlines operated a route to Chicago for