Darwin International Airport / RAAF Darwin guide

Darwin International Airport sits on Henry Wrigley Drive in the northern suburbs of Darwin, sharing its runways with RAAF Base Darwin. The Royal Australian Air Force owns the site; Darwin International Airport Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Airport Development Group, operates civilian services under a 1945 agreement that opened the former military airfield to commercial flights, closing the older Parap civil aerodrome by the end of 1946.

The base was the target of Australia's largest wartime attack: on 19 February 1942, two Japanese air raids killed at least 243 people and destroyed 23 aircraft on the ground. The current passenger terminal, built well clear of the original wartime buildings, opened in December 1991 and has since been expanded to handle wide-body aircraft on routes to Southeast Asia.

As Australia's northernmost international gateway, the airport carried close to 1.8 million passengers in the 2024 financial year, ranking it eleventh among Australian airports by traffic. It is the hub for Airnorth, which links Darwin to remote Northern Territory communities, and connects internationally to Singapore, Dili and Kuala Lumpur alongside domestic routes to Brisbane, Adelaide, Cairns and the Gold Coast.