Haneda International Airport in Tokyo offers tours of the aircraft maintenance facilities. There are two tours available, one operated by ANA and the other by their main competitor JAL. Both are free but you need to make a reservation ahead of time. Note that the tours are in Japanese only but are still suitable for non-Japanese speakers.

Generally they book up very fast but if you’re flexible you can usually find some last minute availability a couple of weeks before.

The tours start with a 30 minute introduction presentation, then you get the explore the museum area for about 20 minutes, and finally you get to spend about 40 minutes visiting the maintenance facilities.

JAL Sky Museum:

Each plane had it’s own retro-looking maintenance indicator board (white = safe, red = dangerous).

JAL 777 Tokyo 2020 Olympics livery (JA773J):

Exploring the maintenance hanger:

JAL 787 Dreamliner (JA840J):

Despite the windy and rainy weather one of the hanger doors was open so that we could get some nice runway views.

Overall the tour is a really fun experience, especially considering that it is completely free! Just make sure you book your tickets well in advance or find some last minute availability if you’re flexible. Even though the tours are only in Japanese you will still be able to enjoy it if you don’t understand Japanese.