Time flies. It has been more than 60 glorious years since Taipei SongShan Airport was officially established on April 16, 1950. Being the first airport in Taiwan established by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and once the only means for entering and exiting the country for the people of Taiwan, Taipei SongShan Airport has played a very important role in Taiwan’s aviation history. Once chosen as Southeast Asia’s best airport, Taipei SongShan Airport has gone through two major boom-and-busts, and has seen its flight and passenger volume rise and drop with the influence of various economic, political, and transportation-related factors. The history and development of the once glorious and prosperous Taipei SongShan Airport is outlined below in accordance with its various phases:

1. 1936 “Matsuyama Airdrome”

Taipei SongShan Airport was formerly the “Matsuyama Airdrome,” which was established on March 28, 1936. At that time, besides serving the airline route between Taipei and Japan, it also served as the primary parking facility for Japanese military aircraft, which shows the importance of the Matsuyama Airdrome during the Japanese Occupation Period.

2. 1950 “Taipei Songshan Airport”

After Taiwan’s retrocession, Taipei SongShan Airport was officially established on April 16, 1950, with the “Civil Aeronautics Administration Taipei Airport, Ministry of Transportation and Communications” being the administrative authority overseeing its operations. Taipei SongShan Airport was the first airport established in Taiwan, and is the central hub for domestic civilian air transportation.

3. 1965 “Taipei International Airport”

On January 1st 1965, it changed the full name to “Taipei International Airport Supervised by Civil Aeronautics Administration, Ministry of Transportation and Communications” and started to run both domestic and international routes.

4. 1979- Domestic routes only

Nevertheless, due to the limit of land, the business of international routes had moved to Taoyuan International Airport (Former CKS Airport), and TSA ran domestic routes only.

5. 1987-1997 from up to down

Within the decade between 1987 and 1997, new airlines had prosperously joined the service of domestic routes. However, from 1997, due to the impact of higher fuel cost and the accomplishment of high speed railway system in the west of Taiwan, only journeys between off-shore islands and Taiwan operated without deficit.

6. 2008- the prospection of “the Golden Eastern Asia Routs”

From 2008, when the charter flights across the two sides of Taiwan straits during weekends started operating, TSA resumed carrying a big number of passenger traffic again. And the flights between Songshan Taipei and Iata Japan even made TSA’s dream of rebirth come true. TSA’s prospection is to run more routes, such as going up and fro Gimpo Airport in Korea, and make a so-called “the Golden Eastern Asia Routes”.

(Above information is provided by TSA and Now Today News)