 For some years that followed, the Mon-Choisy strip was used as an airport for the rare airplanes that landed on the island.However, in 1942, with the entry of Japan into the Second World War, the island gained a strategic importance in the Indian Ocean and thus the British government hastily built a new airport in the south of the island at Plaisance.On 24 November 1943, the first military airplane, a Dakota of the Royal Air Force (R.A.F) coming from Nairobi with a stopover at Madagascar, landed in Plaisance.