Flights to Nagoya: Centrair Airport, Nonstop Routes from Honolulu and Getting into the City

On the fourth floor of the terminal at Centrair, people who have just landed and people about to leave wander the same shopping street, past a full-size Dreamliner on display. That is often where the question of how to fly to Nagoya gets settled for good. The short answer: you land at Chubu Centrair International Airport, on an island in Ise Bay, and a direct bus runs from there into the city.

How do you fly to Nagoya?

You fly into Chubu Centrair International Airport, known as Centrair, which took over almost all commercial flights from the old Nagoya Airport when it opened on 17 February 2005. The city itself has no other airport to land at for most routes, so the plan comes down to which route gets you to Centrair.

From the United States, the nonstop service named for Centrair comes from Honolulu, flown by Japan Airlines. United Airlines also flies nonstop to Guam, a U.S. territory. A traveler leaving from the mainland therefore usually connects somewhere: through Honolulu, or through Tokyo on one of the Japanese carriers that serve both Tokyo airports from Centrair.

Arriving from Tokyo and the rest of Japan

Centrair is a busy domestic hub, and a trip that begins at another Japanese airport can end here by air. Japan Airlines flies to Tokyo-Haneda and Tokyo-Narita, as well as to Sapporo-Chitose, Kushiro and Obihiro in Hokkaido. ANA Wings covers Tokyo-Haneda and Tokyo-Narita too, along with Fukuoka, Kagoshima, Nagasaki, Sendai and sapporo-Chitose, and reaches the southern islands of Ishigaki, Miyako and Naha.

That makes Centrair a natural link for a route that mixes Nagoya with Hokkaido, Kyushu or Okinawa, and it means you can fly into Tokyo from overseas and continue to Nagoya without leaving the air network. Which of those arrivals suits you depends on where your long-haul flight lands.

Airlines flying to Centrair

Several carriers, full-service and budget, serve the airport. Here is who flies where, domestically and to the United States.

Budget carriers such as Peach and Jetstar Japan join the full-service airlines on domestic routes, so the same destination, Naha for example, can be reached on several different airlines.

Which airport serves Nagoya?

Chubu Centrair International Airport serves Nagoya, and it sits on an artificial island in Ise Bay, south of the city in central Japan. Setting an airport on made land lets planes use a single 3,500 m (11,500 ft) runway over an area of about 470 hectares (1,161 acres).

Terminal 1

Terminal 1 is the main building, with gates for both kinds of flights: 13 for domestic departures and 14 for international ones.

The fourth floor holds Sky Town, a shopping center open to the general public, with 61 shops and restaurants. You do not need a boarding pass to browse it, so it works as a place to eat a meal before a flight or to pass time on a long layover. Next door, the Flight of Dreams complex has a Seattle theme, opened in 2018, and shows a prototype Boeing 787 Dreamliner as its centerpiece.

Terminal 2

Terminal 2 opened on 20 September 2019 for budget airlines, with 11 international gates and 9 domestic gates. If your ticket is with a low-cost carrier, check which building the flight leaves from before you head to the airport, since the two terminals are separate buildings with their own check-in.

Peach and Jetstar Japan are the low-cost names on the route table above, and they are the sort of airline this building was built for.

An island with more than flights

The island also holds Aichi Sky Expo, an exposition center that opened on 30 August 2019 with six exhibition halls, each 10,000 m² (110,000 sq ft). When a large trade fair is on, the airport area has visitors who are not flying at all.

Since the airport took over almost all flights from the old Nagoya Airport, there is little reason to look for another landing point. For an international traveler, Centrair is the airport for Nagoya.

How do you get from the airport to the city?

A direct bus is one way: Centrair Limousine runs between the airport and central Nagoya, Sakae and major hotels. The airport is 22 miles (22 mi) south of Nagoya, across a bridge, so you will be traveling over the water in any case.

By bus

Centrair Limousine serves both directions, to and from central Nagoya, the Sakae district and major hotels. For a traveler heading to a hotel in one of those areas, the bus means one seat from the terminal to a stop near the destination, with luggage riding along.

Sakae is the downtown shopping and entertainment district, so the bus gives you a way to reach either the station area or that district directly. The same service works in reverse for the flight home.

By train or taxi across the bridge

The island is joined to the mainland by the Centrair Bridge, a toll road, and a Meitetsu local train serves the stop beyond the airport at Rinku Tokoname Station, one stop away. Cyclists are not allowed on the bridge, so anyone with a bicycle leaving the airport takes that local train one stop or a taxi across. A taxi crosses by the same bridge, which is the road option for anyone not using the bus.

By ferry to Tsu

A ferry links the airport with the passenger terminal in Tsu, a trip of 40 minutes. It is a route for a traveler whose plans lie across the bay, not for one going to Nagoya itself, and it gives a different way of arriving: by water, with the island receding behind you. For a first visit to Nagoya, the bus is the service that names the city and its main hotels as its stops.

Good to know before you go

The U.S. State Department rates Japan Level 1: Exercise Normal Precautions.

Centrair works as a place to spend time as well as pass through, with Sky Town’s shops and restaurants on the fourth floor open to anyone, so a long wait between flights can be spent eating or browsing.