Salt Lake City International Airport traces its origins to December 21, 1920, when the city opened Woodward Field, a single cinder-surface runway on what one historian described as a partially waterlogged salt grass pasture west of downtown. The site cost $4,000 for 100 acres. Five years later, on May 23, 1926, Western Air Express carried 2 passengers, Ben Redman and J.A. Tomlinson, perched atop mail sacks on an eight-hour flight to Los Angeles. It was the first scheduled commercial passenger departure in the United States. That operation became Western Airlines, which grew a major hub in Salt Lake City before merging with Delta Air Lines in 1987.

SLC sits roughly 4 miles west of downtown, at an elevation of 4,227 feet above sea level, flanked by the Wasatch Range to the east and the Great Salt Lake to the northwest. That geography funnels traffic through a relatively compact airspace, and the airport's parallel runway layout has long supported a strong on-time performance record. Delta is the dominant carrier by a wide margin, accounting for a substantial majority of total traffic and operating transatlantic routes to Amsterdam, London Heathrow, and Paris Charles de Gaulle alongside an extensive domestic network. A dozen other carriers, including Southwest, United, Alaska, and KLM, round out the schedule.

In September 2020, the airport opened the first phase of an entirely new terminal complex, replacing a facility that dated to the mid-20th century. The project, constructed on the site adjacent to the original buildings, introduced a single central terminal feeding 2 linear concourses connected by underground tunnel. Subsequent phases expanded gate capacity through 2024, with a final phase expected in 2026. The airport handled over 28 million passengers in 2024, a record, and ranks among the 25 busiest airports in the United States.