Japan’s money-losing regional airports have weighed on public coffers for decades. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism is now hoping that the private sector can turn around the most troubled cases. Yesterday the ministry received the final bids for a 30-year contract to operate seven airports in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost main island, from 2020. The ministry has auctioned off its airports before but this is the first time it has bundled seven at once. The Hokkaido airports draw a combined 28 million travellers a year but only one is not in the red: Sapporo’s Shin Chitose Airport, a nationally run facility that is Japan’s second-most profitable airport. The auction drew interest from property developer Mitsubishi Estate, railway operator Tokyu and the Development Bank of Japan, among others. The scheme’s success so far has the government already planning two more rounds of airport privatisations in Kumamoto and Hiroshima.