It serves the eastern Rhine-Ruhr area, the largest urban agglomeration in Germany, and is mainly used for low-cost and leisure charter flights.

Most of the air traffic today is by low cost airlines operating Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 family series aircraft to warm-weather destinations and business centres.

The first mass carrier at Dortmund Airport was Air Berlin, which began flights to London, Milan, and Vienna in 2002, supplementing its leisure routes to the Mediterranean.

The airport's master plan consists of the following elements: Increasing normal operating hours by one hour at night (to 23:00h), with an additional one-hour window in the morning and at night for exceptions, lengthening the runway to 2,800 m (9,200 ft), expanding the terminal and its infrastructure, improving the motorway connections and directly connecting the airport to mass transit.

In October 2014, Air Berlin announced it was leaving Dortmund Airport entirely, cancelling their last remaining summer seasonal route to Palma de Mallorca.

At one point, Spanish low-cost airline Vueling offered flights to Barcelona, but they have been discontinued despite strong demand.

The Hungarian low-cost airline began servicing the airport in the mid 2000s by operating several routes to Eastern Europe, in large parts due to the Ruhr's significant Slavic community.

[7] In October 2024, Ryanair announced the termination of all routes at three German airports including Dortmund, citing high operational costs.

[8] In December 2024, Eurowings also announced it would downsize its operations in Dortmund, terminating the year-round service to Munich Airport as well as not resuming four seasonal destinations.