Czechoslovak military aviation was born at Kbely. According to the base’s official history, the site on the high plain between Kbely, Letňany and Vysočany on the north-eastern edge of Prague was chosen in November 1918, a few weeks after independence. Several provisional buildings and canvas hangars went up before the winter, and in December 1918 the first aircraft of the Czechoslovak “air navigation” took off from the field.

The permanent airfield grew in the 1920s. In the spring of 1920 six Wagner-type hangars were brought from the former Austrian airfield at Cheb; some survive and now hold museum exhibits. Barracks and modern reinforced-concrete hangars followed, laid out in a gentle arc around a control tower, and in 1928 the water tower known as “Maják” (the lighthouse), with warning and navigation lights at its top, became the landmark of the base.

Kbely was also Prague’s civil airport. In the spring of 1923 a military air transport detachment was set up from the 1st Aviation Regiment to support the new Czechoslovak State Airlines, and in October 1923 the airline’s first scheduled service left Kbely for Bratislava. The airfield kept its monopoly until Ruzyně opened in 1937. In early 1938, with war looming, the 4th Aviation Regiment with Avia B-534 fighters and the 6th Aviation Regiment with Aero Ab-101 and Avia B-71 bomber and reconnaissance squadrons moved in.

The air force mobilised in 1938 but never fought. In March 1939 Kbely was among the first military sites the Germans occupied, and the base history records that they set up large repair facilities on the airfield and in nearby factories. That made the Prague airfields targets: on 25 March 1945 some 650 US bombers from Italy attacked Kbely, Letňany, Čakovice and the ČKD works in Vysočany, according to an account summarised by Wikipedia; the raid killed 235 people in Prague.

After liberation Kbely became the home of military transport. A Military Air Transport Group was formed in July 1945 with Soviet- and British-supplied C-47s and captured aircraft, an Air Transport Regiment followed in April 1946 and moved to Kbely in 1947, partly re-equipped with American and British surplus. By 1952 it had two C-47 squadrons, one Li-2 squadron and a glider squadron, and in December 1953 it became a transport and airborne regiment.

In 1956 a ministry VIP flight, the 7th Squadron of the Ministry of National Defence, was split off and stayed at Kbely when the regiment itself moved to Prostějov in August 1959. Mi-1 and Mi-4 helicopters arrived in 1956; the Il-14 gave way to the An-24 from 1966, the first L-410 came in 1977, the Mi-17 in 1983, and Yak-40, Tu-134 and Tu-154 jets carried officials. On 31 December 1989 the 3rd Air Transport Regiment was re-formed, and on 5 May 1990 it received the name of the first president, T. G. Masaryk.

For most of the Cold War the government’s own jets belonged not to the air force but to the interior ministry’s aviation service. The ministry bought eight Yak-40s between 1972 and 1979, and the air force received its two in 1981. After the split of Czechoslovakia the interior ministry kept the VIP role, but in 1998 the government decided to follow NATO practice: the State Air Service was dissolved on 31 December 1998 and from 1 January 1999 the Kbely base flew all state officials “without any increase” in its personnel, as the base history puts it.

The base prepared for the task with a new control tower in 1996, a 50 million koruna conversion of Hangar 47 into a passenger terminal between 1995 and 1998, and a precision approach system in 1998. The Canadair CL-601 Challenger that came with the transfer had flown its first official trip, Prime Minister Václav Klaus to Nuremberg, on 24 September 1992; it served as 5105 until 16 August 2022, logging 7,692 hours, and is now in the Kbely museum.

The two Yak-40s made their last flight at Kbely on 2 September 2020. The first Airbus A319CJ, serial 2801, joined the fleet on 30 January 2007 and a second, 3085, followed. The unit was renamed the 24th Air Transport Base on 1 July 2003, and the 241st Transport Squadron flies the Airbuses today. Smaller delegations travel in two salon L-410 Turbolets, which moved with the Airbuses to Ruzyně when the Kbely runway was closed for repairs in 2022.

The tactical transport fleet sits with the 242nd Transport and Special Squadron, split from the 241st in 2007. Four C-295Ms, serials 0452 to 0455, arrived in 2010 to replace the An-26, and two C-295MWs, 0481 and 0482, followed in 2021. By January 2026 the six had flown about 25,400 hours in some 23,000 cycles; the squadron has kept one on the Sinai with the Multinational Force and Observers since 2013. The squadron also flies L-410 Turbolets, including two L-410FG photogrammetry aircraft used for aerial survey and laser scanning.

Some of the flights have been evacuations. On 31 July 2014 C-295M 0452 flew from Kbely to Tripoli as militia fighting closed in on the Libyan capital and brought back 21 people, among them the Czech ambassador and 11 Swiss embassy staff, after a refuelling stop in Palermo. In August 2021 the 241st Squadron’s A319CJ 3085 made three flights to Kabul via Baku and brought 195 people to Kbely.

The most unusual cargo is wild horses. With Prague Zoo, the C-295s have carried Przewalski’s horses back to Central Asia: 34 to the Great Gobi B reserve in western Mongolia between 2011 and 2019, and since 2024 to the Altyn Dala reserve in Kazakhstan, where C-295M 0455 delivered eight in the third transport between 31 May and 4 June 2026, bringing the total to 55.

The 243rd Helicopter Squadron flies the Polish-built PZL W-3A Sokol and the Mi-17; the army’s recruitment site counts 19 helicopters in the squadron. The Sokols arrived at the end of 1996, eleven of them obtained from Poland in exchange for the Czech Republic’s ten remaining MiG-29 fighters. Their first big job was the catastrophic Moravian floods of 1997. Six were fitted out for the air rescue service; in 20 years they logged 27,300 hours and carried more than 11,600 patients.

The Sokols have not had an easy old age. In February 2024 the defence ministry cancelled their modernisation after the only bid came in at 850 million koruna against an estimate of 250 million, calling the upgrade uneconomical, and the type is to leave service on 31 December 2028. They are still busy: between 2 and 5 May 2026 Mi-17s from Kbely and W-3As from Kbely and Líně made 596 water drops and carried 1,023 tonnes of water against the fire in Bohemian Switzerland National Park, more than a third of all drops.

Kbely also flew salon helicopters. Mi-8S VIP versions arrived in January 1989; the Czech Air Force kept five, while a sixth, 0837, went to Slovakia when the federation split; three remained in 2021 and were to be retired between 2023 and 2025, replaced by two Mi-17s in a standard passenger fit. One of them, 0829, crashed on 28 October 2001 with the American astronaut Eugene Cernan on board, an accident described under Incidents.

The old hangars hold the Kbely Aviation Museum of the Military History Institute Prague, founded in 1968. By its own count the collection numbers 275 aircraft: nearly 100 in covered halls, 25 outdoors, 155 in storage and 10 airworthy. It describes itself as one of the largest aviation museums in Europe. For its 58th season, opened on 25 April 2026, it unveiled the restored Aero Ab-11 in which Capt. Vilém Stanovský and mechanic František Šimek flew more than 15,000 km through 23 countries in 1926.

The airfield itself keeps changing. In May and June 2022 the 2,000 m runway 06/24 was closed for repairs worth more than 34 million koruna; the A319CJs and salon Turbolets moved to Ruzyně and the CASAs and L-410s to Čáslav, while helicopters kept flying from Kbely. The Czech AIP lists Kbely as a military aerodrome open around the clock, with arrivals and departures of other aircraft prohibited between 2100 and 0500 local time.

The biggest change in decades came on 16 July 2026, when Embraer formally handed over the first of two C-390 Millennium transports at Kbely. The contract was signed on 25 October 2024 for 11.3 billion koruna without VAT; the aircraft, 0520, flew in from Brazil, and the second is due in December 2027. The Air Force commander said it would also help citizens in natural disasters, evacuations and large fires.