JAL is the first heavy aircraft to takeoff at the extended runway B

Narita Airport is currently extending its runway B to 2500m long, which will then allow heavy aircrafts to takeoff and land on the runway. Japan Airlines' charter flight departs at 07:00 to Hakodate will be the first heavy plane to use the extended runway, which is scheduled to open on October 22.

Before this extension, heavy aircrafts like 747-400 and 777-300ER can only use Narita's runway A. When the Fedex plan crashed at runway A last year, all JAL long haul flights were forced to cancel or divert to other airports, causing a chaos at Narita. With the newly extended runway B, if the same type of incident occurred, heavy aircrafts can still use runway B and reducing passengers' inconvenient.

JAL is organizing a special one-day tour to celebrate flight No. 1. The scheduled aircraft is a 747-400. The tour will tentatively costs 25,000 to 40,000 yen per person (probably depends on the class you are flying). Every passenger will receive a commemorative flight certificate. Once you arrive at Hokodate, there will be bus tours to three different places (not sure if you can choose only one or you can go to all three).

JAL will release the details of the tour on September 29 at 14:00. You can check JAL website (Japanese only) on that day for further details of the tour.