The airport was opened by the British Colonial authorities. According to the website of the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority, due to the airport's location on Lake Victoria and the existing facilities, the colonial government decided that the most optimal location for aviation traffic was Entebbe. On 10 November 1951, the airport was formally reopened after its facilities had been extended. Runway 12/30 was now 9,900 feet (3,000 m), in preparation for services by the de Havilland Comet. The new main terminal building of the airport was designed by Yugoslav Montenegrin architect Aleksandar Kekovi? and built by Energoprojekt holding in 1972-1973 period. The Old Entebbe airport is used by Uganda's military forces. It was the scene of a hostage rescue operation by Israeli Sayeret Matkal, dubbed Operation Entebbe, in 1976 after an Arab-German hijacking of Air France Flight 139 following a stopover in Athens, Greece, en route to Paris from Tel Aviv. The scene of that rescue was the old terminal, which has been demolished, except for its control tower and airport hall. According to a 2006 published report, plans were made to construct a domestic passenger terminal at the site of the old airport. The airport was partially destroyed in April 1979 when it was captured by Tanzanian forces during the Uganda–Tanzania War. According to ThePrint in November 2021, reports in African media suggest that China could take over the airport over the default of a loan, which was denied by China's foreign ministry and Government of Uganda. Bloomberg News reported that the Ugandan government is seeking to amend a $200m loan agreement it signed with the Export-Import Bank of China in 2015, to ensure it doesn't lose control of the airport, citing a report from the Daily Monitor, an independent Ugandan daily newspaper. On 1 December 2021, the Attorney General of Uganda stated they had seen the story regarding the airport in media and that it was reportedly fake news.