Los Angeles International Airport opened in October 1928 as Mines Field, an unpaved airfield on a former wheat and barley farm in the Westchester neighborhood of Los Angeles. Named after local real estate agent William W. Mines, it spent its first two decades as a municipal airfield unable to attract scheduled airline service from carriers entrenched at nearby Burbank and Glendale. That changed on December 9, 1946, when American Airlines, TWA, United Airlines, and Western Airlines simultaneously launched commercial passenger operations, relocating from Burbank Airport and Grand Central Airport in Glendale. Overnight, Los Angeles Airport became the region's dominant commercial facility. Pan American World Airways followed in 1947. The airport was officially renamed Los Angeles International Airport in 1949.

The modern terminal complex took shape in 1961, designed by a joint venture of Pereira & Luckman, Welton Becket and Associates, and architect Paul R. Williams. The plan organized a series of terminals around a central parking area, with satellite concourses reached by underground tunnels, a layout that defines the airport to this day. The Theme Building, opened the same year, became the airport's most recognizable landmark, a futurist structure that anchored the mid-century Jet Age identity of the facility. The first jet passengers had departed for New York on American Airlines 707s in January 1959. A major expansion ahead of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics added Terminal 1 and the Tom Bradley International Terminal, a $123 million international facility dedicated on June 11, 1984.

Today, LAX sits 18 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles with the Pacific Ocean directly to the west and residential communities on all other sides, a geographic constraint that has shaped every expansion decision since the jet age. The airport is a hub or operating base for more passenger airlines than any other airport in the United States, including Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines. It holds the record as the world's busiest origin-and-destination airport, with approximately 88% of its travelers beginning or ending their journey in Los Angeles rather than connecting. In 2024, the airport handled 76,587,980 passengers.