Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport traces its origins to 1920, when a wooden hangar was built at a former auto-racing venue called Snelling Speedway to support airmail service, and the site became known as Speedway Field. In 1923, it was renamed Wold-Chamberlain Field in honor of Ernest Wold and Cyrus Chamberlain, two local pilots killed in World War I. On July 5, 1927, Northwest Airways flew its first paying passenger, St. Paul businessman Byron Webster, from the Twin Cities to Chicago, inaugurating commercial aviation at the field that would grow into MSP. The airport took its current name in 1948 with the arrival of international service.

Today MSP is the dominant hub of the Upper Midwest, located within 10 miles of both downtown Minneapolis and downtown Saint Paul. Delta Air Lines is the airport's anchor carrier, accounting for roughly 65 percent of passenger traffic. Sun Country Airlines and Endeavor Air, a Delta regional subsidiary, are also based here. The airport operates 2 terminals and 131 gates: Terminal 1, named for Charles Lindbergh, who was raised in Minnesota, spans 117 gates across 7 concourses; Terminal 2, named for Vice President Hubert Humphrey, holds 14 gates. In 2023, analytics firm Cirium recognized MSP as the world's most punctual international airport, with on-time departure and arrival rates above 84 percent.

MSP is also a joint civil-military facility, sharing the field with the Air Force Reserve's 934th Airlift Wing and the Minnesota Air National Guard's 133rd Airlift Wing. A light-rail line links both terminals to the Mall of America and the downtowns of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. MSP is the only airport in the United States where its 2 commercial terminals sit on entirely separate roadway systems.