Osaka International Airport (大阪国際空港, Ōsaka Kokusai Kūkō) (IATA: ITM, ICAO: RJOO), often referred to as Itami Airport (伊丹空港, Itami Kūkō), is the primary regional airport for the Kansai region of Japan, including the major cities of Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe. It is the airport closest to Kyoto, 36 km (22 mi) southwest of Kyoto Station. Itami Airport has a small footprint, covering only 311 hectares (768 acres) of land.
Despite its “international” designation, the airport caters exclusively to domestic flights. Kansai International Airport (43 km (27 mi) away) took over the region’s international traffic in 1994 and competes with Itami for domestic traffic. Itami also faces competition from Kobe Airport (26 km (16 mi) away), a smaller domestic airport opened in 2006.
The airport was named after the city of Itami, Hyōgo Prefecture, because most of its land is located there. A portion of the airport property is also located in Toyonaka and Ikeda cities of Osaka Prefecture. The terminal complex is located in all three of these cities, and the only access from the Itami side is via a long tunnel that passes below the runway and apron.
In FY2006, Itami used to be Japan’s third busiest airport and the Kansai region’s busiest. In 2015, it had 139,450 aircraft movements, serving 14,541,936 domestic passengers and carrying 140,668 metric tons of freight cargo. In 2018, Itami was the seventh busiest in Japan, serving 16.3 million passengers. In the Kansai region, Kansai International Airport had far more passengers than Itami Airport.