In 2015, Tbilisi City Assembly named the airport after famous medieval Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli.

The airspace of Georgia was closed for most of 2020 with the exception of government-mandated expatriation flights,[5] but regular international air traffic resumed as of February 2021.

Designed by the architect V. Beridze in the style of Stalinist architecture the building featured a floor plan with symmetric axes and a monumental avant-corps in the form of a portico.

[10] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the civil war and the economic crisis in the newly independent Georgia, passenger numbers had dropped to 230,000 by 1998.

The airport got a contemporary and functional design, to provide an optimized flow of both passengers and luggage from the parking lot to the planes, with a 25,000 m2 (270,000 sq ft) total usable area, while future expansions can be implemented without interrupting terminal operations.

Runway guard lights, LED stop bar signals and guidance signs at all the holding positions on the airport's main runway were also added The instrument landing system was also upgraded to CAT II, which enables aircraft to land during poor weather conditions.

Construction was set to begin in late 2019,[17] but the project was effectively abandoned in spring 2021 when a feasibility study did not produce the desired outcome.

Below are destinations served according to press releases and the schedules authorised by the Georgian Civil Aviation Agency on a seasonal basis.

On 20 July 1992, a Tupolev Tu-154 cargo plane overran the runway and crashed during a takeoff attempt, killing all 24 occupants and 4 on the ground.