The First Airport in Malaya is in Taiping, Perak

Taiping Airport is located in Tekah and is also known as Tekah Airport. Taiping Airport was built in 1929 and was the first airport officially established in the Federated Malay States, and it is also likely the first commercial airport in Southeast Asia.

The primary function of Taiping Airport was to serve as a commercial airport for British officials and European merchants. Among its other uses, it served as an airstrip for the Royal Malayan Air Force. Key routes from Taiping Airport at the time provided short-distance travel facilities to locations such as Alor Star, Kuala Lumpur, and Penang. For your information, the flight route from Penang to Singapore also used Taiping Airport as a stopover location.

Passenger flight services in Malaya during their heyday were launched by Wearne Air Services (WAS), which was the first passenger flight service. It was also useful for daily flights to Taiping to deliver daily newspapers. Taiping Airport also witnessed history when Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta landed there on August 12, 1945, to meet with Dr. Burhanuddin Helmi and Ibrahim Yaacob to discuss the possibility of uniting Malaya with Indonesia (Melayu Raya) upon achieving independence.

Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta in Taiping

After the end of the Japanese occupation of Malaya, Taiping Airport only offered flights to other airports around Perak, which indirectly made the airport in Ipoh the only one in the state of Perak to provide passenger services to other states. Today, Taiping Airport is no longer used for commercial flights, but it has received recognition from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), and its contributions remain a part of history.

Fokker-type aircraft

As additional information, Taiping Airport only permitted Fokker-type aircraft to land there. This was due to the short runway, which is not at all suitable for modern types of aircraft.