Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport opened on September 4, 1930, as Wayne County Airport, a modest airfield in Romulus, Michigan, built to carry U.S. airmail. During World War II, the U.S. Army assumed control and renamed it Romulus Army Air Field, using it as a staging base for ferrying military aircraft to Europe. Wayne County reclaimed the airport in 1947, expanded it significantly, and by 1958 had renamed it Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, the name it carries today.

The airport's hub identity took shape in the 1980s, when Republic Airlines established a hub there, later absorbed by Northwest Airlines following their 1986 merger. Northwest's presence drove the most consequential chapter in the airport's history: the construction of the Edward H. McNamara Terminal. Opened on February 24, 2002, the $1.2 billion midfield facility was designed by SmithGroup and was the first major airport terminal in the United States to open after the September 11 attacks. Its Concourse A stretches nearly 4,900 feet and features a fully enclosed automated people mover, the first of its kind installed inside an airport concourse anywhere in the world. When Northwest merged with Delta Air Lines in 2008-2010, DTW became Delta's second-largest U.S. hub. A second modern terminal, now called the Warren Cleage Evans Terminal, opened in 2008 to consolidate non-SkyTeam carriers.

Today DTW operates 6 runways across roughly 4,850 acres, about 18 miles southwest of downtown Detroit. It is Michigan's busiest airport by a wide margin, connecting the Motor City, Ann Arbor, and the broader Great Lakes region to more than 140 nonstop destinations. Delta and its SkyTeam partners, including Air France and Aeromexico, dominate the McNamara Terminal, while the Evans Terminal serves carriers such as American, United, and Southwest. The airport's geographic position, between the dense eastern U.S. corridor and the upper Midwest, makes it a natural connecting point for transatlantic and transpacific routings.