By the early 1950s Kallang Airport, squeezed between the city and the sea, could no longer cope. The colonial government built a new airport on the flat land at Paya Lebar from 1952, to a design by the public works engineer J. J. Bryan, at a cost of about $37 million. The Secretary of State for the Colonies, Alan Lennox-Boyd, opened it on 20 August 1955; The Straits Times called it the door to Singapore.

It grew with the country. In 1958 Malayan Airways flew its first service beyond Southeast Asia from here, to Hong Kong in a leased DC-4, and a few military hangars were converted into a bigger terminal. Wikipedia’s figures show 770,562 passengers in 1966, 1,688,199 in 1970 and a peak of 5,697,571 in 1978; a S$3.5 million arrivals building opened in 1977. Malaysia-Singapore Airlines, with its yellow livery, used Paya Lebar as its hub until the airline split in 1972 into Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines.

The most glamorous visitor was Concorde. Wikipedia’s Concorde article records that the joint British Airways and Singapore Airlines service at first lasted for only three flights, between 9 and 13 December 1977, then resumed on 24 January 1979 and ran until 1 November 1980; G-BOAD wore Singapore Airlines colours on its left side. By then the airport was full, and the government had chosen to build a new one at Changi.

The air force had been at Paya Lebar before the airlines left: construction of an Air Movement Centre began in late 1967, and Wikipedia says control passed to the RSAF in 1980. When Changi opened in 1981 all civil flying moved there and the airport was renamed Paya Lebar Air Base. Its long runway, 3,780 metres according to Wikipedia, made it a natural fighter base.

Wikipedia lists 141 and 144 Squadrons with F-5S/T Tiger IIs, and RF-5S reconnaissance fighters with 141, at Paya Lebar. Singapore received its first 18 F-5Es and three F-5Fs by February 1979 and kept buying; the type was upgraded to F-5S/T standard from 1996 and left service when 144 Squadron disbanded in September 2015.

The F-15SG replaced it. Singapore chose the Boeing type over the Rafale on 6 September 2005 and built up to 40 aircraft by 2018, some kept in Idaho with the joint 428th Fighter Squadron. Wikipedia places 142 and 149 Squadrons at Paya Lebar, with the C-130 Hercules of 122 Squadron, and the RSAF has held open houses here, among them the 2008 show at which the reformed Black Knights performed.

Paya Lebar has had a small permanent US Air Force presence for more than three decades. The 497th Fighter Training Squadron was activated here on 31 October 1991, under the Thirteenth Air Force, and became the 497th Combat Training Squadron in 1994; since 2006 it has been a flight under the 36th Operations Group at Andersen AFB on Guam.

It has no aircraft. Its job is to receive American squadrons that deploy to Singapore, chiefly for Exercise Commando Sling, a series of bilateral air combat training exercises with the RSAF that has sometimes included the Royal Australian Air Force. A small permanent staff grows to between 120 and 190 people for each four-week deployment, several times a year, with support functions based at Sembawang.

The runway also brings senior American visitors. Wikipedia lists George W. Bush in October 2003 and November 2006, Vice-President Dick Cheney in 2007, Barack Obama on 14 November 2009 for the APEC summit, Donald Trump on 10 June 2018 and Vice-President Kamala Harris on 22 August 2021.

A fighter base in the middle of the city brings noise and, above all, height limits on the buildings around it. The government has decided to close Paya Lebar: Wikipedia, drawing on the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s plans, says the base is to be decommissioned from around 2030 and turned into a new town of housing, offices, factories and green space, with the height restrictions in the surrounding area relaxed.

The flying units are to move to Tengah and Changi. Tengah is being enlarged over cemetery and farm land for the purpose, and a new runway is planned there. Wikipedia reports that the runway and some of the old airport buildings at Paya Lebar may be kept as parks and museums; the 1950s terminal and control tower survive inside the base, out of bounds to the public. No official date for the last military flight from Paya Lebar has been published.