During this transition, all airline flights moved from the Philip Billard Municipal Airport to the newly-established Forbes Field.

In 2012 the MTAA Board of Directors renamed the facility to Topeka Regional Airport and Business Center, maintaining the name of the airfield as Forbes Field.

[4] Airline service began in the early 1930s by a small mail carrier United States Airways which flew a route between Denver and Kansas City.

Flights made stops in Goodland, Salina, and Topeka, Kansas, using a five-passenger Metal Aircraft Flamingo.

In the early 1940s, three new airlines began service, flying Douglas DC-3 aircraft through the Philip Billard Municipal Airport near downtown Topeka.

Trans World Airlines, (TWA), added Topeka as one of many stops on the carriers' transcontinental route between Los Angeles and New York.

Central Airlines began service in 1958 with DC-3s by picking up the routes to Kansas City and Wichita formerly operated by TWA and Braniff.

[5] After moving to the current Forbes Field in 1976, Topeka then saw multiple new carriers, some providing jet service: Frontier Airlines upgraded their service with Boeing 737-200 jets direct to Kansas City, Denver, and Wichita, and added flights to Chicago O'hare International Airport with a stop in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Capitol Air flew Cessna 402 and de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft and shut down about the time of the Braniff collapse in 1989.

Trans Central Airlines provided commuter flights to Oklahoma City and onto Dallas/Fort Worth in 1981 and 1982 using Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner aircraft.

Air Midwest began commuter flights to Kansas City in 1981 using Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner II aircraft.

This service ended in early 1991 as Air Midwest established yet another codeshare agreement at Kansas City with US Airways.

[11] After three years with no service, Allegiant Air came to Topeka in 2006 with nonstop jet flights to Las Vegas on two days per week.

[12][13] An additional effort to revive scheduled airline service was made when United Express, operated by ExpressJet, began flights on January 7, 2014, with two daily Embraer-145 regional jets nonstop to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

[1] In the year ending October 31, 2021, the airport had 30,086 aircraft operations, average 82 per day: 60% military, 38% general aviation, 1% air taxi, and <1% airline.