The overall passenger count at Narita International Airport, near Tokyo, in fiscal 2023 jumped 72% from the previous year to 35,259,433, the airport's operator said Thursday.
In the year that ended in March, the number of foreign passengers on international flights, in particular, spiraled up 2.7-fold to a fresh record high of 17,891,912.
"Air travel demand fully recovered in fiscal 2023, thanks to the complete removal of (COVID-19) border measures last May," Narita International Airport President Akihiko Tamura told a news conference.
In March alone, the number of non-Japanese international passengers using the airport in Chiba Prefecture was also an all-time high, at 1,801,527, up 43% from a year earlier.
"Demand remained bullish for short-haul flights within Asia," Tamura said.
The operator forecast that during the Golden Week holiday period in Japan between Friday and May 6, international passengers would total 835,200, up 33.6% from the same period last year.
The peaks would be Saturday for departures and May 6 for arrivals, it added.