Soewondo Air Force Base (IATA: MES, ICAO: WIMK) is currently a military airbase in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia.

[3] Previous international flights had been opened to Hong Kong, Taipei, Amsterdam, Abu Dhabi, Phuket, Chennai, Johor Bahru, Malacca and Ipoh.

[7] The airport's former name is taken from the plantation area owned by a Pole, Baron Ludwik Michalski in which it is situated.

Michalski was a veteran of 1863 January Uprising against the Imperial Russian rule, after which he fled to Switzerland.

In 1872, Michalski obtained a concession from the Dutch East Indies administration for a tobacco plantation in Medan.

In 1924, Dutch KLM test pilot N. J. Thomassen à Thuessink van der Hoop planned to fly on a Fokker F.VII in a pioneering flight from the Netherlands.

By the time the news had arrived, it was too late to prepare a proper landing strip at Polonia.

Van Kempen urged the Netherlands East Indies administration in Batavia to allocate the necessary funding to finish the airport at Polonia.

In 1928 the airport was officially opened which was marked with the landing of six aircraft owned by KNILM, (not a subsidiary of KLM) on a temporary hardened dirt runway.

[9] It is often said that its location in a residential district, the wealthy Polonia area, is due to a superstition that the loud noises from aircraft drive away malevolent spirits.