Pingtung Airport () are two airports in

Pingtung City Pingtung City (; Hokkien Pe̍h-ōe-jī, POJ: ''Pîn-tong-chhī'') is a county-administered city and the county seat of Pingtung County, Taiwan. History The area of modern-day Pingtung City was originally a village of the Taiwanese Plains Aborig ...

Pingtung County Pingtung County is a county located in southern Taiwan. It has a warm tropical monsoon climate and is known for its agriculture and tourism. Kenting National Park, Taiwan's oldest national park, is located in the county. The county seat is Pin ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. The airport is currently home to the

Republic of China Air Force The Republic of China Air Force, retroactively known by its historical name the Chinese Air Force and unofficially referred to as the Taiwanese Air Force, is the military aviation branch of the Republic of China Armed Forces, currently based i ...

6th Tactical Mixed Wing, and formerly offered commercial flights.

History

Pingtung Airport was opened in November 1920 during Japan's rule over Taiwan. Originally, the base was used for "air policing", that is, the use of airplanes to govern

indigenous peoples Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

living in hard-to-reach areas. This practice ended in 1927 when the

Imperial Japanese Army Air Service The Imperial Japanese Army Air Service (IJAAS) or Imperial Japanese Army Air Force (IJAAF; ja, 大日本帝國陸軍航空部隊, Dainippon Teikoku Rikugun Kōkūbutai, lit=Greater Japan Empire Army Air Corps) was the aviation force of the Im ...

8th Air Squadron was moved from

Tachiarai, Fukuoka is a town located in Mii District, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. As of April 30, 2017, it has an estimated population of 15,567 and a density of 680 persons per km². The total area is 22.83 km². Tachiarai is divided into three neighborhoo ...

, to Pingtung. With further expansions and more military personnel moving in, Pingtung Airport served an important role in the Japanese military throughout the Japanese colonial era and the

Pacific War The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War, was the theater of World War II that was fought in Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, including the vast ...

. After Japan's defeat in the Pacific War in 1945, the base came into the control of the Republic of China Air Force then jointly controlled by the

RAF Far East Air Force The former Royal Air Force Far East Air Force, more simply known as RAF Far East Air Force, was the Command organisation that controlled all Royal Air Force assets in the east of Asia (Far East). It was originally formed as Air Command, South Ea ...

from 1950 until 1991 and known as RAF Pingtung.

Commercial flights

Between 1936 and 1942,

Japan Air Transport was the national airline of the Empire of Japan from 1928 to 1938. History Commercial aviation began in Japan with the privately held Japan Air Transport Institute, which pioneered passenger service between Sakai, Osaka and Tokushima on Shikok ...

and later

Imperial Japanese Airways was the national airline of the Empire of Japan during World War II. History With the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, there was a tremendous need for air transport capability by the Japanese military, which had traditionally drawn on th ...

operated commercial flights to Taihoku Airfield (now

Songshan Airport Taipei Songshan Airport is a regional airport and military airbase located in Songshan District, Taipei, Taiwan. The airport covers an area of . The civilian section of Songshan Airport has scheduled flights to domestic destinations in Taiwa ...

in Taipei). In November 1993, Pingtung Airport opened for commercial flights again. Since the passenger terminal was not completed, the Pingtung Performing Arts Hall was used as the airport terminal and passengers were shuttled to and from the south airport. In February 1995, a small passenger building was completed at the south airport; in 2005, a larger passenger building was completed at the north airport. Originally,

TransAsia Airways TransAsia Airways (TNA, until January 1992 known by its Chinese-translated name Foshing Airlines;For historical pictures with "Foshing Airlines" on it, see: ) was a Taiwanese airline based in Neihu District in Taipei. Though the company started ...

operated flights out of the airport until Uni Air took over in 2007. However, with the completion of

Taiwan High Speed Rail Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) is the high-speed railway of Taiwan consisting of one line that runs approximately along the west coast, from the capital Taipei to the southern city of Kaohsiung. With construction and operations managed by a pri ...

in 2007, very few people took the flights anymore, and commercial flights ceased in August 2011.

Notes

References

* * * {{authority control 1920 establishments in Taiwan Airports in Pingtung County

History

Commercial flights

See also

Notes

References