Tokyo Haneda International Airport opened on August 25, 1931, when the first flight departed the newly built airfield on reclaimed land along Tokyo Bay. It was Japan's first purpose-built civil aviation airport, replacing Tachikawa Airfield as the home of Japan Air Transport, the country's flag carrier at the time. That original airfield had a single 300-meter concrete runway, a small terminal building, and 2 hangars.

After World War II, the airport was taken over by U.S. forces and returned to Japanese administration in 1952. It served as Tokyo's primary international gateway through the 1960s and 1970s, handling the arrival of jet aircraft and the rapid expansion of postwar air travel. When Narita International Airport opened in 1978, Haneda was reoriented almost entirely toward domestic operations. It remained in that role for more than 30 years, becoming the backbone of Japan's dense domestic network. The Haneda-Sapporo and Haneda-Fukuoka routes consistently rank among the busiest air corridors in the world.

A major transformation came in October 2010, when the airport opened Terminal 3, its dedicated international terminal, alongside a 4th runway (D-Runway) built partially over the mouth of the Tama River using a hybrid piled-pier and land-reclamation structure. This expansion restored scheduled international service to Haneda for the first time in 32 years. Today the airport operates 3 terminals: Terminal 1 is the primary base for Japan Airlines, Terminal 2 for All Nippon Airways, and Terminal 3 handles international operations. Located in Ota, Tokyo, the airport handled approximately 85.9 million passengers in 2024, ranking 4th in the world by passenger traffic. Direct rail connections via the Tokyo Monorail and Keikyu Airport Line link the airport to central Tokyo in under 30 minutes.