Typhoons and major storms forced the cancellation of nearly 16,000 flights at major hub airports in Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Mainland China, South Korea, and Taiwan in a period of fewer than three months this summer, according to China-based aviation data service company VariFlight.
Thirteen typhoons and strong storms hit airports in the six northeast Asian countries/territories in the period from July 1 to September 20, VariFlight found. Although the report takes into account the effects on hub airports of the summer’s two most destructive storms—the massive typhoons Jebi and Mangkhut—it does not evaluate the effects of typhoons Kong-Rey and Trami, which affected the northeast Asia region at the time of the report’s publication.
Typhoons did not affect seven of the 34 hub airports VariFlight originally included in its analysis, prompting the company to remove them from the dataset. However, VariFlight reported that in less than three months this summer, four typhoons hit seven hub airports in the region—Fukuoka, Kagoshima, and Kansai in Japan and Hangzhou Xiaoshan, Nanjing Lukou, and Shanghai’s Hongqiao and Pudong airports.
Each of Japan’s five largest hubs—Chubu Centrair, Osaka’s Itami and Kansai, and Tokyo’s Haneda and Narita airports—experienced three typhoons, while seven of the region’s hubs suffered through two and nine hubs felt the effects of a single typhoon.
Shanghai’s Pudong International Aiport felt the worst effects of typhoon-related flight cancellations this summer, experiencing cancellations of 1,349 outbound and inbound flights as a result of typhoons Ampil, Jongdari, Yagi, and Rumbia. Tokyo’s Haneda Airport suffered more than 1,000 flight cancellations and Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport experienced just under 1,000 cancellations. In all, typhoons caused 15,732 flight cancellations at the 27 northeast Asian hubs they hit this summer.
Typhoons Rumbai, Jebi, and Mangkhut caused most flight cancellations in the region, according to VariFlight. The huge typhoon Jebi forced the closure of Osaka’s offshore Kansai International Airport for nearly a month after tidal surges inundated its runways, aprons, and terminals and caused a ship to crash into the massive road-and-railway KIA Access Bridge, creating major damage. Mangkhut disrupted flights at Hong Kong, Macau, and the southeast coast of Mainland China. However, typhoons Soulik and Rumbia caused the longest flight delays on average. Rumbia directly hit Dalian, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai Hongqiao, and Shanghai Pudong in China, while Soulik hit Japanese airports—particularly Fukuoka and Kagoshima—and Gimhae and Jeju airports in South Korea. Jeju saw the longest typhoon-affected average delay time of any airport in the study, at 24 hours.
However, Okinawa’s Naha International Airport was the hub at which on-time departure performance felt the worst effects of this summer’s major storms, as the airport saw just 4.47 percent of its flights depart on time during the days of typhoon landfall. Naha’s on-time departure performance proved significantly worse than that experienced by all other northeast Asian airports other than Dalian Zhoushuizi, which saw just 6.87 percent of its flights leave on time during typhoon landfalls.
Overall, Dalian’s on-time flight schedule (to within 30 minutes) was easily the worst affected of all the airports in the study, as the airport saw just 5.41 percent of its arrivals land on time during typhoon landfalls. Shanghai Hongqiao, the next-worst affected airport for on-time arrivals, saw 21.15 percent of its arrivals land on time during landfalls.