Built on farmland, 908 ft (277 m) ASL lying NNE of the Hoher Dörnberg, the airport was opened on 11 July 1970.

The most important customer at first was the travel agency branch of REWE Group, with charter flights to the Mediterranean region.

[6] The flights to Tenerife operated by Germania were scheduled to end in October 2013 but already terminated on 22 August 2013 due to low demand.

[7] Germania as the airports main user announced that their service to Palma de Mallorca would resume in the 2014 summer season.

[8] The airline also announced flights to Palma de Mallorca, Antalya, Heraklion and Hurghada for summer season 2015 and therefore increasing their presence at Kassel Airport.

[14] Shortly after, newly founded German leisure charter airline Sundair announced they would base an aircraft at Kassel Airport during the 2017 summer season serving up to 13 weekly flights to destinations around the Mediterranean.

[15] The finance minister of Hesse stated that this would be the airport's final chance to establish sustainable operations before being legally downgraded to an airfield due to a lack of consistent commercial services.

Due to the delayed delivery of their ordered Airbus A320[20] the flights are operated as wet-lease by Cobrex Trans with a Boeing 737 and by other Airlines.

[22] In December 2017, the state government of Hesse announced that they would not downgrade the airport to an airfield as previously proposed due to an expected positive outlook regarding the negative financial and operational situation.

[25] Kassel features one single small passenger terminal building with basic facilities such as car rental desks and some shops.