Thanks to a sharp rise in the number of foreign visitors to Japan, demand for air transport services is growing. It is necessary to exercise ingenuity so that the three neighboring airports in the Kansai region can be used effectively.

The right to operate Kobe Airport, owned by the Kobe municipal government, is to be sold off to a private company. Kansai Airports, financed by Orix Corp. and a French firm, will start operating the airport in April next year.

Kobe Airport opened in 2006, with the total project costing 314 billion yen (about $2.8 billion). Kansai International Airport and Osaka International Airport (also known as Itami Airport) are within about a 15.5-mile radius of it. From the outset, there was uncertainty about the management of Kobe Airport.

The number of passengers handled at Kobe Airport in fiscal 2016 stood at 2.72 million, barely 60 percent of what was originally projected. In terms of real balance of payments, the airport has been in the red for seven straight years.

The city government will reap 19.1 billion yen from the sale of the operating rights for 42 years, but it is expected to be left with as much as 3.8 billion yen in debts. It could be surmised that the city government had an overoptimistic view of the prospects for the airport business. Knowledge that only the private sector can provide should be utilized to put the airport’s operation in order.

Kansai Airports has been operating Kansai ­International Airport and Itami Airport since April last year and has achieved certain results. In a public tender for the operation of Kobe Airport, the company emphasized its advantage of being able to manage the three airports in an integrated manner, for instance by avoiding competing service routes.

When the three airports are combined, they will have a total of five runways. Although the aviation infrastructure is on par with that of the Tokyo metropolitan area, the infrastructure is hardly being managed effectively.

Kobe Airport, which is located off the coast, is not constrained much by noise problems related to takeoffs and landings. But it is restricted to operating only 30 domestic flights a day, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. The flight cap was decided prior to its opening by a discussion panel on the three Kansai airports composed of officials from local governments, economic circles and the central government.

The restriction was established because there were concerns that the new airport might inflict a further blow to Kansai International Airport, use of which had been sluggish.

The number of passengers handled at Kansai International Airport topped 25 million in fiscal 2016, an increase of more than 10 million in five years. Against the backdrop of a growing boom of tourism in Japan, low-cost carriers in particular have gone into service at an accelerating pace.

Expectations are high for Kobe Airport to assume a supplementary role to Kansai International Airport. The discussion panel should make efforts to quickly ease the operational restrictions placed on Kobe Airport.

In the 1970s, there was a scheme to construct an airport off the coast of Kobe as an alternative airport to Itami Airport, which was causing a great deal of noise pollution. Because of opposition from the city of Kobe and other factors, it was decided that Kansai International Airport should be constructed off the coast of Senshu, a southwestern district of Osaka Prefecture, far away from the central part of Osaka.

Later, Itami Airport was kept in place due to calls from local communities.

The central government aims at welcoming 40 million foreign visitors to Japan three years from now. It is a matter of urgency to boost the system for accommodating foreign visitors to the Kansai region, together with the Tokyo metropolitan region. The roles to be shared by three airports in the Kansai region — Kansai International Airport and Kobe Airport, both located offshore, and Itami Airport located in an urban area — should be examined closely once again.