The airfield has its beginnings as a military airport established in the borough of Rakowice in 1912,[1] one of the most modern and largest in Poland at the time.In 1917, the airfield became one of the stopovers in the first European air mail service linking Vienna with Kyiv and Odessa.The expansion of nearby Nowa Huta district of Kraków forced its closure.In June 2004, a portion of the airport contiguous with the Polish Aviation Museum was reopened as a police helicopter base and for an occasional fixed-wing aircraft traffic on runway 26 for an annual two-day air show held on the last weekend of June.Media related to Old Airport Rakowice-Czyżyny in Kraków at Wikimedia Commons