San José Municipal Airport opened for commercial air service on February 1, 1949, when a Southwest Airways DC-3 landed on a modest runway carrying 2 pilots, 7 passengers, and 2,550 baby chicks. The chicks were unloaded; the passengers continued to Los Angeles. It was an inauspicious start for what would become Silicon Valley's primary airport. The site was formerly onion farmland, chosen for its proximity to downtown San José and favorable weather conditions.

The airport's growth tracked closely with the technology industry. Passenger traffic peaked at 14.2 million in 2000 during the dot-com boom, then fell sharply following the bust and the September 11 attacks. In 2001, the City Council renamed the facility Norman Y. Mineta San José International Airport, honoring the former San José mayor, long-term U.S. Congressman, and Secretary of Transportation who was instrumental in securing federal funds for the airport's development and who ordered the grounding of all U.S. flights on September 11, 2001. The airport's current two-terminal configuration took shape in 2010, when a $1.3 billion modernization program delivered a new Terminal B, designed with a perforated metal facade meant to evoke fiber-optic cable, and a full renovation of Terminal A, which had originally opened in 1990.

Today, SJC sits roughly 4 miles from downtown San José and operates 2 parallel runways each 11,000 feet long. Southwest Airlines accounts for close to 50% of passenger traffic, with Alaska Airlines, American, Delta, and United among the other major carriers. International service includes nonstop flights to Tokyo-Narita and several Mexican cities. The Wall Street Journal ranked it the Best Midsize Airport in the U.S. in 2023, citing its reliability, value, and convenience.