Twenty-four years after Kansai airport's opening, Typhoon Jebi roared through, flooding the main runway, parts of the main terminal building and dislodging a tanker in the adjacent bay that drifted into the facility's connecting bridge.
By the end of Tuesday, Sept. 4, leaders in the Kansai region finally understood that their international manufacturing and tourism sectors were reliant on an airport just a few meters above sea level, reachable mostly via a structurally vulnerable bridge.
Over the next few days, they rushed to restore whatever domestic and international flights they could at undamaged Terminal 2 and Runway B, despite questions about whether economic concerns over a closed airport were taking priority over safety questions about the bridge.