Sandakan Airport is a domestic airport which serves
Sandakan
Sandakan (, Jawi: , ) formerly known at various times as Elopura, is the capital of the Sandakan District in Sabah, Malaysia. It is the second largest city in Sabah after Kota Kinabalu. It is located on the Sandakan Peninsula and east coast ...
in
Sandakan District,
Sabah
Sabah () is a state of Malaysia located in northern Borneo, in the region of East Malaysia. Sabah borders the Malaysian state of Sarawak to the southwest and the North Kalimantan province of Indonesia to the south. The Federal Territory ...
,
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Mal ...
. It is located
[ west of downtown Sandakan. In 2005, the airport handled 621,513 passengers and registered 10,876 flights.]
History
World War II
The site was selected during World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
for a Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...
(RAF) airfield, but by the time of the Japanese invasion of Borneo, work had not progressed beyond clearing the area of vegetation.[ After the ]Fall of Singapore
The Fall of Singapore, also known as the Battle of Singapore,; ta, சிங்கப்பூரின் வீழ்ச்சி; ja, シンガポールの戦い took place in the South–East Asian theatre of the Pacific War. The Empire ...
, the Japanese military decided that its aircraft needed a refuelling stop between peninsular Malaya and the Philippines and decided to complete the RAF airfield site.[ The Japanese Army transferred some 1,500 British and Australian prisoners of war from Singapore to work on the airfield.][Silver 2007, p. 61] Commencing in August 1942, the prisoners, along with thousands of Javanese- and local labourers, built the airfield by hand, including a runway, on a site composed of tufa
Tufa is a variety of limestone formed when carbonate minerals precipitate out of water in unheated rivers or lakes. Geothermally heated hot springs sometimes produce similar (but less porous) carbonate deposits, which are known as travertin ...
. The airfield received its first flight in December 1942, when General Yamawaki Masataka landed in a bomber aircraft and declared the airfield open. At various times in 1945, all remaining prisoners of war were evacuated from the vicinity of the airfield, with all but six dying during what became known as the Sandakan Death Marches.
Expansion plan
On 7 May 2017, Prime Minister Najib Razak
Dato' Sri Haji Mohammad Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak ( ms, محمد نجيب بن عبد الرزاق, label= Jawi, script=arab, italic=unset, ; born 23 July 1953) is a Malaysian politician who served as the 6th prime minister of Malay ...
announced an allocation of RM 80 million for the airport runway extension project.[Govt has allocated RM80m for Sandakan airport runway extension project: Najib](_blank)
/ref> The extension project commenced in 2019, but completion is delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
.Wee Ka Siong
Datuk Seri Ir. Dr. Wee Ka Siong (; born 20 October 1968) is a Malaysian politician, and engineer who served as Minister of Transport for the second term in the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration under Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob ...
the Malaysia Minister of Transport in December 2021 told that the runway extension project will be completed really soon.
On June 2022 the extended runway has been completed along with the adjacent Taxiway Bravo. Runway 08 is equipped with ILS while runway 26 has VOR and RNAV approaches are available.A320
The Airbus A320 family is a series of narrow-body airliners developed and produced by Airbus.
The A320 was launched in March 1984, first flew on 22 February 1987, and was introduced in April 1988 by Air France.
The first member of the fami ...
, A321
The Airbus A321 is a member of the Airbus A320 family of short to medium range, narrow-body, commercial passenger twin engine jet airliners; it carries 185 to 236 passengers. It has a stretched fuselage which was the first derivative of the ba ...
. This also allows operations of widebody aircraft like A330 though subjected to either payload or range restrictions.
Airlines and destinations
Traffic and statistics
Statistics
References
* Silver, Lynette Ramsay: ''Sandakan: A Conspiracy of Silence''; Opus Publications, Malaysia.
External links
Sandakan Airport, Sabah
at Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad
Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad () is a Malaysian airport company that manages most of the airports in Malaysia. The firm was recently awarded the duty to manage airports in international destinations. It has its head office in the Malaysia ...
Sandakan Airport Real Time Flight Schedule
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Buildings and structures in Sandakan
Airports in Sabah