Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) traces its roots to the Albuquerque Municipal Airport, which opened in 1939 with 2 paved runways and a Pueblo-style terminal designed by Ernest Blumenthal. Within 2 years, the adjacent Albuquerque Army Air Base was established to the east, the facility that would eventually become Kirtland Air Force Base. That military relationship never ended. ABQ and Kirtland still share the same runways today, making it one of relatively few joint civil-military airports in the United States.

TWA introduced the first jet service in 1961 using the Boeing 707. The airport was renamed the Albuquerque Sunport on April 17, 1963, and the current terminal, designed by architect William E. Burk Jr., opened on November 12, 1965 with 8 gates and no jet bridges. A major expansion from 1987 through 1989 added Concourses A and B and brought jet bridges throughout. The airport gained its current name, Albuquerque International Sunport, in 1994. Southwest Airlines began service on April 3, 1980, and has grown to dominate passenger volumes. ABQ is a focus airport for Southwest, which accounts for over half of all passengers. The airport serves more than 5 million passengers annually and connects New Mexico to dozens of domestic destinations.

Situated at 5,355 feet MSL between the Rio Grande valley and the Sandia Mountains, ABQ is in high-desert terrain. That elevation demands pilot attention to density altitude on every takeoff. The airport also anchors the Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center (ZAB), whose airspace responsibility extends over most of Arizona and New Mexico, plus parts of Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas, giving ABQ an outsized role in Southwest airspace management well beyond its medium-hub passenger ranking.