The largest nearby business centres are Düsseldorf and Essen; other cities within a 20-kilometre (12 mi) radius are Duisburg, Krefeld, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Neuss, and Wuppertal.

[7] At the beginning of World War II, civil use of the airport ceased in September 1939 and the airfield was used by the military.

[7] On 1 April 1955, Lufthansa started services between Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, and Munich,[7] which still exist today.

[8] In November 1997, Terminal C was completely redeveloped, with three lightweight construction halls serving as departure areas.

[9] The first construction stage in the "Airport 2000+" programme commenced in 1998 with the laying of a foundation stone for an underground parking garage under the new terminal.

The new departures hall and Terminal B were opened in July 2001 after 2½ years of construction time; the rebuilt Gebäude Ost (East Building) was reopened.

In 2002, the inter-terminal shuttle bus service was replaced by the suspended monorail called the SkyTrain connecting the terminal building with the InterCity train station.

The system was developed by Siemens and is based on the similar H-Bahn operating with two lines on the Dortmund university campus.

[11] In January 2015, Emirates announced it would schedule the Airbus A380 on one of their two daily flights from Dubai to Düsseldorf starting in July 2015.

[4] In June 2015, Lufthansa announced the closure of its long-haul base at Düsseldorf Airport for economic reasons by October 2015.

[17] In August 2017, Air Berlin also announced the termination of all long-haul routes from Düsseldorf to destinations in the Caribbean on short notice due to ongoing bankruptcy proceedings.

[19][20] Shortly after, Air Berlin also announced the termination of all remaining long-haul operations leading to the loss of several connections to the United States at Düsseldorf Airport.

[21] On 9 October 2017, Air Berlin announced the termination of all of its own operations, excluding wet leases, by the end of the month[22][23] leading to the loss of one of the airport's largest customers.

In February 2018, Eurowings announced the relocation of all long-haul routes currently served from Cologne Bonn Airport to Düsseldorf by late October 2018 to strengthen its presence there.

[27] In August 2020, Delta Air Lines removed the Atlanta route from their schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[29] Shortly after Delta Air Lines suspended its Atlanta route, Ryanair announced the closure of its base in Düsseldorf — which was operated on a wetlease basis by Lauda — by 24 October 2020.

[31] In the autumn of 2022, German airline Sundair drastically reduced its operations from Düsseldorf, leaving a single route to Beirut.

In January 2023 it became public that Sundair would not return to Düsseldorf in the summer season of 2023 with any flight, eradicating its former base from the network.

Terminal B was originally inaugurated in 1973 and has 11 gates (B01–B11) used for domestic and EU flights by a few Star Alliance members such as Aegean Airlines, but mainly by SkyTeam and Oneworld members like Air France, British Airways, KLM, Finnair, Iberia and ITA Airways.