Kallang Airport
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Kallang Airport Pangkalan Udara Kallang 加冷机场 (Jiā Lěng Jīchǎng) காலாங் வான்முகம் (Kālāṅ Vāṉmukam) |
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The control tower of Kallang Airport
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| Airport type | General public-usage type (civilian-service) | ||||||||||
| Operator | British colonial government in Singapore (from 1937 until 1955, when the airport was shut down) | ||||||||||
| Serves | Singapore | ||||||||||
| Location | Kallang | ||||||||||
| Coordinates | 01°18′26.68″N 103°52′24.16″E / 1.3074111°N 103.8733778°E | ||||||||||
| Runways | |||||||||||
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Kallang Airport, also known as Kallang Aerodrome, Kallang Airfield and RAF Kallang, opened in 1937 as Singapore's first purpose-built civil airport and was built together with an anchorage area for seaplanes along the airport's perimeter on the waterfront (on the Kallang River). Large tracts of land were reclaimed in the Kallang Basin to turn the vast swampy area into a circular-shaped airfield and to build a slipway for seaplanes. The airport was closed down in 1955 when the new Singapore International Airport at Paya Lebar (also known as Paya Lebar Airport and now operated as Paya Lebar Air Base by the RSAF) was built and opened in that same year. Although most of Kallang Airport was demolished soon after it was shut down and the cleared areas of the former airport were redeveloped (such as the old seaplane anchorage area and the runway), the distinctive airport terminal building, some nearby airport structures (major ones include a few of the original aircraft hangars and former airport administration blocks, some of which have been quite recently demolished) and the iconic control tower were retained and served as the headquarters of the People's Association (a major government-run community organisation in Singapore) until April of 2009. Just a year before, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) of Singapore gazetted what remained of Kallang Airport for conservation as a historic monument/landmark in the country. It is currently unoccupied.
Kallang Airport got its name from the nearby Kallang Basin, which was named after a group of sea-gypsies living around the area in the 1800s.
On 11 February 1930, the Dutch Airline Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij (KLM) operated the first service flight between Amsterdam and Batavia (since renamed Jakarta), landing in Seletar with a Dutch-made Fokker trimotor monoplane carrying 8 passengers and a cargo of fresh fruit, flowers and mail. This marked the beginning of commercial civil aviation in Singapore. KLM later introduced a regular Amsterdam to Batavia flight service in late-1931.
Two years later, in July 1933, Imperial Airways, the flagship airline of the British empire at the time, started a service between London and Darwin via Cairo, Karachi, Calcutta, Singapore and Jakarta. This service was later extended to Brisbane and operated jointly with Qantas Empire Airways on 17 December 1934.
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