The first land airport of
Helsinki, located in Tattarisuo in the township of Malmi, became operational in December 1936. The area is now in the district of Malmi in Helsinki. The airplanes of Aero Ltd (now
Finnair) were converted from floatplanes to land-based aircraft without delay and moved to the new airport along with general aviation aircraft. The
functionalist terminal building was completed in 1938 and designed by architects Dag Englund and Vera Rosendahl. The official opening ceremony took place on 15 May 1938. Helsinki-Malmi Airport was among the first in the world to be designed from the beginning as an international airport. It made travel to and from the capital of Finland much faster than before. In the late 1930s, domestic air routes already reached all the major cities in Finland, and in 1940 it became possible to fly even to
Petsamo in the far north. The
Winter War interrupted civil aviation at Malmi, and the airport was taken over by the
Finnish Air Force. Civilian traffic was moved to other airfields. In the
Continuation War, both civilian and military traffic used Malmi Airport. When the Continuation War ended in September 1944, the airport was taken over by the
Allied Control Commission. It was returned to the supervision of the Finns at the end of 1946. During the war, bigger and heavier aircraft had been developed, and after the war the aircraft industry and commercial aviation business flourished. Malmi Airport was confronted by a new situation. It became evident that the runways, built originally on a deep layer of clay and swampy topsoil, would require considerable investment if they were to bear the weight of the new big airliners. The problem was particularly acute with Helsinki slated to host the
1952 Summer Olympics. Cost estimates showed that extending the runways, adding pilework under them and strengthening them in other ways would be prohibitively expensive, and the plans were abandoned. A new airfield built to international standards was first opened to traffic in 1952 in
Vantaa, in time for the Olympics, today known as
Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. Scheduled traffic gradually moved from Malmi to the new airport. Malmi Airport continued to serve a new category of commercial aviation,
charter flights, for many years. In special circumstances, it also acted as a backup airfield for Helsinki Airport for lighter passenger aircraft. After the opening of Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, Malmi Airport was used mainly for
general aviation. Professional flying education and professional aviation, as well as private aviation and aviation clubs, operated there. 75 to 80 percent of all flights were training flights, and in 2002, 50 percent of all pilots in Finland and two out of three professional pilots were trained there. From the point of view of air traffic, Malmi Airport was the only free-schedule international airfield for lighter traffic within 150 km of the capital (Helsinki Airport is the only coordinated airport in Finland, i.e., it does not serve non-scheduled traffic without a runway slot application that must be filed 3 hours in advance). In 2013, about 7,500 landings of flights between Malmi and other airfields were logged just among Malmi's own flight operators, making Malmi the second-busiest airport for cross-country flights in Finland. The aviation shows and other public events at the airport have typically been enjoyed by tens of thousands of spectators. The
Finnish Border Guard had its air base at the airport until the end of 2016, when the State moved all its operations elsewhere (about 14% of Malmi's operations), anticipating the airport's closure. == Closure ==