Flight AMS - NRT (Tokyo) – AMS with KLM
✈️ Arrival in Tokyo
Yet another interesting flight. When we landed in Tokyo I saw a house in between two taxiways. The taxiways were wiggly… what’s going on here?
🏗️ The battle for Narita airport
In 1965 the Japanese government wanted to start constructing Tokyo’s second large airport on some farmland. They were met with fierce opposition by the farmers, who were supported by a group of environmentalist students who took up their cause. This turned out to be a multi-decade conflict.
Farmers who refused to sell their land barricaded themselves into underground bunkers with tunnels stocked with food. Dislodging them could take days. Frequent battles were fought between protestors and police. Nearly any phase of the airports construction had to be completed under sieged conditions. This continued for years!
In 1971 the most cataclysmic of battles was fought, where the protestors defended an actual fortified position with watchtowers against a force of 5000 police. Three lives were lost in this battle.
In the aftermath, the organisation of opposition had the interesting strategy of buying land in the airport perimeter, where they built a 60 meter high tower in the final approach path of the runway. The tower was manned and defended but eventually taken down by the government.
The protests against Narita became a symbol of protest against the establishment and continued for years. Some farmers never sold and still live in the airport premises. In 1977 it finally opened. Finally in 2002 the second runway was finally constructed.
🌍 A round around the world
Flying back from Tokyo is interesting since we fly back over the North Pole. Since you depart from Amsterdam to the east and then from Tokyo also (north)east, we call this trip “a round around the world”. You fly into Amsterdam from the North-west. You wouldn’t expect so coming from Tokyo!
Long-haul flight over the poles have more cosmic radiation exposure than other flights. EASA states that if the radiation doses should exceed 6 mSv per year, rosters have to be adjusted to stay under this doses. This is not the case within KLM. KLM provides us with monthly radiation doses calculations, so you can check for yourself.
🌌 Aurora borealis
We saw the Aurora when flying back. This was quite spectacular. We informed all the awake passengers via a message on the in-flight entertainment system. The aurora is caused by charged particles coming from the sun, which is called a solar wind. They are deflected by the earth magnetic field, which works like a shield, deflecting the solar winds to the poles. Here these charged particles collide with the atmosphere. The type of particles with which they collide determine the colour. Green is from collisions with Oxygen below 200 km altitude.
