In one of the earlier incidents Luft Hansa, which flew the London-Brussels-Frankfurt-Munich-Vienna route with Sabena, made a forced landing in Salzburg.

[citation needed] At the start of World War II, on 1 September 1939, Salzburg Airport was seized and in 1943 the "Luftgaukommando VII" in Munich was put in charge of it.

[citation needed] On 1 August 1958, a control tower was put into operation after a 15-month construction period and a new terminal was opened in 1966.

[5] In August 2016, German low-cost airline Eurowings announced it would open its second Austrian base in Salzburg, with flights to six European metropolitan destinations from January 2017.

In the same time, Austrian Airlines announced the termination of their route from Salzburg to their hub at Vienna International Airport after 60 years,[7] partially due to the heavily expanded Railjet high-speed train connections between the cities.

Salzburg Airport has a small footprint, covering only 175 hectares (432 acres) of land but has a 2,750m runway equipped to handle aircraft as large as the Boeing 747-400.