The airport serves the area of the northern Ruhrgebiet, western and southwestern Lower Saxony, Emsland, Westphalia and parts of the Netherlands and features flights to some European city and leisure destinations.

In mid 1967, the German authorities approached the British Army for assistance in building an airfield to serve the Münster-Osnabrück area.

An airstrip existed at Greven, but the site was heavily wooded and included one badly drained and swampy area, and the site was within a few hundred metres of the Dortmund-Ems Canal which had been bombed during World War II, and where the presence of unexploded bombs was suspected.

As a gesture to recognise the British Army involvement, the Germans gifted a Ka 7 glider to the regiment and gave them honorary membership in the Greven Gliding club.

On 29 October 1984, British Airways started to serve the route from Berlin to Münster/Osnabrück with BAC Super One-Eleven; these were the first scheduled jet flights from the airport.

The cities of Münster and Greven and the Steinfurt district planned to donate an area of around 500 acres (2.0 km2) to the airport for airport-related commercial activities.

The airport can be reached via two motorways: There are several scheduled bus connections from Münster railway station and by a coach shuttle from Osnabrück.