Narita international airport is set to keep its main runway open for an extra hour from late October ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics after reaching an agreement Monday with surrounding local governments and the transport ministry.

In the first such move since the airport's opening east of Tokyo in 1978, the bigger of its two runways will stay open between 6 a.m. and midnight, pushing back the current closing hour of 11 p.m. to better accommodate the expected increase of visitors.

"We want to contribute to achieving the country's big target of attracting 40 million foreign visitors in 2020," Makoto Natsume, president of Narita International Airport Corp., said at a press conference.

Demand for longer runway operating hours is high among budget carriers and cargo flight operators, Natsume said. "The airport will be more user-friendly."

However, residents in neighboring areas are concerned about an increase in noise. A 62-year-old housewife in the town of Shibayama feared that she may not be able to sleep after the extension of operating hours. "I normally try to sleep after 11:00 p.m.," she said.

The airport opted to extend the operating hours from late October, when the winter flight schedules are implemented, rather than from the start of the summer schedules in late March 2020, amid intensifying competition with Haneda airport, the other major international gateway in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Haneda aims to increase international flights from spring 2020.

The extension is part of efforts to increase the annual number of takeoff and landing slots at Narita airport from the current 300,000 to 500,000 by building a third runway in the late 2020s and eventually extending the overall operating hours to between 5 a.m. and half past midnight.