It is located on an artificial island (Kankūjima (関空島)) in the middle of Osaka Bay off the Honshu shore, 38 km (24 mi) southwest of Ōsaka Station,[4] located within three municipalities, including Izumisano (north),[5] Sennan (south),[6] and Tajiri (central),[7] in Osaka Prefecture.

[13][14] In the 1960s, when the Kansai region was rapidly losing trade to Tokyo, planners proposed a new airport near Kobe and Osaka.

The new airport was part of a number of new developments to revitalize Osaka, which had been losing economic and cultural ground to Tokyo for most of the century.

Engineers needed to overcome the extremely high risks of earthquakes and typhoons (with storm surges of up to 3 m or 10 ft).

In 1990, a three-point-seven-five-kilometre (2.33 mi) bridge was completed to connect the island to the mainland at Rinku Town, at a cost of $1 billion.

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone responded to American concerns, particularly from Senator Frank Murkowski, that bids would be rigged in Japanese companies' favour by providing special offices for prospective international contractors,[31] which ultimately did little to ease the participation of foreign contractors in the bidding process.

[32] Later, foreign airlines complained that two-thirds of the departure hall counter space had been allocated to Japanese carriers, disproportionately to the actual carriage of passengers through the airport.

[33] The island had been predicted to sink 5.7 m (18 ft 8 in) by the most optimistic estimate as the weight of the material used for construction compressed the seabed silts.

[37] Just before the airport was opened, the Ministry of Transportation approved the landing fee for its international flights at 2400 yen a tonne.

[44] As of 2008[update], the total cost of Kansai Airport was $20 billion including land reclamation, two runways, terminals, and facilities.

Most additional costs were initially due to the island's sinking, caused by the soft soils of Osaka Bay, which was anticipated by designers.

It is the international gateway for Japan's Kansai region, which contains the major cities of Kyoto, Kobe, and Osaka.

[46] Osaka business owners pressed the government to take a greater burden of the construction cost to keep the airport attractive to passengers and airlines.

[48] The airport authority was allotted four billion yen in government support for fiscal year 2013, and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport and the Ministry of Finance agreed to reduce this amount in stages through fiscal year 2015, although local governments in the Kansai region have pressed for continued subsidies.

[49] Kansai has been marketed as an alternative to Narita Airport for international travelers from the Greater Tokyo Area.

By flying to Kansai from Haneda Airport and connecting to international flights there, travelers can save the additional time required to get to Narita: up to one and a half hours for many residents of Kanagawa Prefecture and southern Tokyo.

The airport was at its limit during peak times, owing especially to freight flights, so a portion of Phase II expansion—the second runway—was made a priority.

[52] The additional runway development, which was opened in time for the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Osaka, has expanded the airport size to 10.5 square kilometres (2,600 acres).

[55] There are additional plans for several new aprons, a third runway (06C/24C) with a length of 3,500 m (11,483 ft), a new cargo terminal and expanding the airport size to 13 km2 (5 sq mi).

[56] Since July 2008, Osaka Prefecture governor Toru Hashimoto has been a vocal critic of Itami Airport, arguing that the Chuo Shinkansen maglev line will make much of its domestic role irrelevant, and that its domestic functions should be transferred to Kansai Airport in conjunction with upgraded high-speed access to Kansai from central Osaka.

[57] In 2009, Hashimoto also publicly proposed moving the functions of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Kansai Airport as a possible solution for the political crisis surrounding the base.

As of October 2012[update] these moves were intended to bring Kansai's fees closer to the level of Narita International Airport, where landing fees were around 20% lower than Kansai's, and to improve competitiveness with other Asian hubs such as Incheon International Airport in South Korea.

[61] KIAC conducted a public tender to sell the operating rights for Kansai and Itami Airport in May 2015.

The airport had to pause operations after seawater surges inundated the island; runways were hit, and the water reached up to the engines of some aircraft.

The main KIX passenger terminal, Terminal 1, is a single four-storey building designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (Renzo Piano and Noriaki Okabe), and has a gross floor space of 296,043 square metres (3,186,580 sq ft).

[69] It has a sophisticated people mover system called the Wing Shuttle, which moves passengers from one end of the pier to the other.

Nankai operates the rapi:t, a limited express train service to Namba Station on the southern edge of downtown Osaka.

Rail connections to and from Kansai Airport are expected to further improve access to and from Umeda with the opening of the Naniwasuji Line in 2031.