This is a 4 part series which include various airport cancellations which I bought and rescued from a stock book which was once part of the most comprehensive collection of North Borneo stamps and postal history ever assembled. I have also included items which were previously seen on these pages.
This is the first airport cds and can be quite elusive especially with covers. Notice that there was not enough room for "Sabah, Malaysia" to be included. As we have here are the EDS of 19 March 1966 and LDS of 29 April 1968.
This is the second airport cancellation now that the town has changed name to Kota Kinabalu. This is again an uncommon cancellation which was used between known dates of 22 August 1968 and 30 December 1969.
The third cancellation has a stop and also less space between the letters "KK". This cds probably started use in 1970. We have an EDS of 1 FEB 71 as seen on the above cover. The Malay words for Lapangan Terbang came into use possibly in 1974 and then used in handstamps to date.
It started off as a military airfield during the Japanese occupation. After the war, it was ungraded to an airport with additional use for civil aviation and scheduled flights. It was initially a grass strip measuring 1,125 meters long which was suitable for Douglas DC-3s. It was not until 1957 when the runway was resurfaced with bitumen and a new terminal building was also constructed.
Photo by David Ayres Flickr
Taken in 1967 from a Douglas DC-3 with another DC-3 in the foreground. By 1964 the runway has been extended to 1,921 meters in order to accept the much larger Comet 4 planes.
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