Cape Town International Airport was opened in 1954, a year after Jan Smuts Airport (now Or Tambo International Airport) on the Witwatersrand opened. The airport traded Cape Town’s past airport, Wingfield Aerodrome. Initially called D.f. Malan Airport after the then South African head administrator, it at first offered two worldwide flights: an immediate flight to Britain and a second flight to Britain through Johannesburg.

With the fall of politically-sanctioned racial segregation in the early 1990s, responsibility for airport was exchanged from the state to the recently structured Airports Company South Africa, and the airport was renamed to the politically nonpartisan Cape Town International Airport.The first years of the twenty-first century saw huge development at the airport; from taking care of 6.2 million travelers for every annum in 2004-05, the airport crested at 8.4 million travelers for every annum in 2007-08 preceding falling back to 7.8 million in 2008-09.

In arrangement for the 2010 Fifa World Cup, Cape Town International Airport was widely broadened and redesigned. The fundamental center was the infrastructure of a Central Terminal Building at an expense of R1.6 billion, which joined the once divide down home and global terminals and gave a normal check-in area. The takeoffs level of the Central Terminal opened in November 2009, with the whole raising opened in April 2010