Zürich Airport opened on 14 June 1948, when a Swissair Douglas DC-4 lifted off from the newly completed West Runway 10/28 bound for London, the first departure from Kloten. Civil aviation had previously operated from Dübendorf, northeast of the city, but postwar planners chose a new site on partly forested moorland between Kloten and Oberglatt, cleared and stabilized from what had been swampy artillery grounds. Construction began in 1946, and more than one million cubic meters of earth were moved before the first runway was ready.

The airport is nine kilometres north of Zürich city center and serves the greater Zürich metropolitan area as well as Liechtenstein and parts of Vorarlberg in neighboring Austria. A dedicated railway station opened beneath the terminal in 1980, placing the airport within direct reach of Zürich Hauptbahnhof. Today ZRH is the home hub of Swiss International Air Lines, a Lufthansa Group carrier and Star Alliance member, with Helvetic Airways and Chair Airlines also based here. Edelweiss Air and Condor operate as focused carriers from the airport. Routes connect to destinations across Europe, the Middle East, North America, and Asia, with London, Dubai, New York, Singapore, and Bangkok among the busiest.

The airport's layout centers on the Airside Center, a 250-meter-long glazed passenger building that opened in 2004 and acts as the post-security spine linking Terminals A and B. A standalone midfield terminal, Terminal E, is reached by the Skymetro, an underground automated people mover that runs beneath Runway 10/28 in roughly 3 minutes. The airport handled more than 32.5 million passengers in 2025, with 270,116 aircraft movements recorded that year.