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The airport was officially opened on 25 June 1938 during a public air display that included both civil and RAF aircraft and received its first scheduled flight, a KLM flight from Amsterdam. The airport was called Ringway after the area it was located in. KLM was the only international operator to operate out of Ringway and even offered a request stop at Doncaster for passengers who would prefer to land there instead. Over 4000 passengers used the airport during 1938, and the numbers were rising with the same number reported in the first 8 months of 1939. Unfortunately for Ringway airport, it was closed to civil use following the declaration of War.
Construction of an RAF base was started in 1939 and was used for both operational flying and training. From spring 1939, Avro used the 1938-built main hangar for assembly and testing the prototype bombers, the Avro Manchester, Avro Lancaster and the Avro Lincoln, other hangers were used to assemble the Avro York military transport plane. With the introduction of these heavier planes, the airport began to suffer from badly damaged landing areas, with the grass landing areas suffering rutting in wet weather. This reached it's worst point in the 1940/41 winter, when the open ruts froze and caused damage to aircraft maneuvering on the ground. Two 3,000 ft runways were built and were expanded in 1943 as even larger planes used Ringway airport. These runways were used until around 1955 by commercial airlines, and then were still used for another 30 years by light aircraft. They are now out of action.
After the war, Manchester grew rapidly. 1953 saw the first trans-atlantic flight to Idlewild airport (later re-named JFK). In 1958 the airport was handling over half a million passengers. Approval was given for the airport to operate 24 hours and the runway was soon expanded to accommodate the larger planes now being operated by the airlines operating trans-atlantic routes.
In 1962 Manchester opened terminal 1, it's first purpose built airport terminal building, which included aircraft piers. manchester was the only airport in Europe to have aircraft piers. 1972 saw the airport being renamed to "Manchester International Airport". The main runway was extended to its current length of 10,000 ft (3,000 m) on 17 August 1982 to attract long haul flights from worldwide destinations. In 1988 the airport celebrated its Golden Jubilee and by this time was handling around 9.5 million passengers per year. With numbers rising, a second terminal was planned, which was built and opened in 1993. This new terminal also included a railway station that allowed the airport to connect to the national rail network
In 1997 planning permission was granted for the building of Manchester's "Runway Two". It opened in 2001 at a cost of £172 million and was the first full-length commercial runway to open in Britain for over 20 years. 2004 saw the airport reach over 20 million passengers a year. 2004 also saw the opening of the new transport hub. This transport hub, nicknamed "The Station" allows bus, coach and rail passengers together at the airport.
Manchester is now preparing to accept A380 planes, but has already been certified as a diversion aerodrome for A380 flights.