Few of us would have access to Paya Lebar Airport today because it was converted for military use in 1967. However, we have Peter Chan sharing with us on Good Morning Yesterday his memories of the Paya Lebar Airport back when it was still a civilian airport in the early 1960s.
Paya Lebar Airport began as the Singapore International Airport in 1955 and succeeded the Kallang Airport as Singapore’s main civilian airport. Peter writes this about the airport’s location:
Paya Lebar Airport was located in one remote corner from the junction of Airport Road, Paya Lebar Road and Macpherson Road; to get to the airport building one had to drive along Airport Road which was a 2-lane dual carriageway with a center divider planted with tree saplings and shrubs. On either side of the dual carriageway were coconut estates. A car-ride on Airport Road could be quite scary at 5 am when there were no street lights and the only source was the high beam of a car. We had to arrive very early at the airport because my father’s flight was timed at 7 am on a Cathay Pacific Airways (CPA) flight to Hong Kong.
Eventually, Singapore’s growing importance and international air traffic led to the development of another airport, the Changi International Airport that has won numerous accolades and expanded a great deal over the years. Paya Lebar was not abandoned, but instead converted for military use. Read about our old airport in Peter’s post, My Paya Lebar Airport Story.
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