Kannur had an airstrip used for commercial aviation as early as 1935 when TATA airlines operated weekly flights between Bombay and Thiruvananthapuram – stopping at Goa and Cannanore. This airstrip was located within the Kannur Cantonment area at Fort Maidan. The operator started service to Kerala on 29 October 1935 but service did not last long. The long-standing demand for a full-fledged airport was only conceptualized in 1997, when C. M. Ibrahim, the then Union Minister of Civil Aviation, backed the proposal for an airport in the district. The vast extent of land at Moorkhanparamba near Mattannur was identified for the project a few months later following a hectic search for land for developing the proposed airport. The then Chief Minister of Kerala V. S. Achuthanandan laid the foundation stone for the airport at the project site marking the formal commencement of construction activities on 17 December 2010 at a function attended by the then Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel. Though the State government accorded sanction for the Kannur International Airport project in January 1998 and appointed Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (KINFRA) as the nodal agency for its implementation, it had to wait for a decade until it was finally approved by the Central government in January 2008. During the period, a private agency appointed by Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (KINFRA) to study techno-economic feasibility report submitted its report. The earlier site proposed at Madayipara was dropped owing to ecological concerns. Two vast plateaus near Mattannur were identified for the airport, namely Moorkhanparamb and Velliyamparamb, with about 1300 acres and 800 acres of land to be acquired from each respectively. After a prolonged wait, the airport received in-principle approval from the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Union cabinet in January 2008. Land acquisition began in December 2008 after issuing notifications and fixing compensation. The public company Kannur International Airport Limited (KIAL), under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model, was registered in October 2009. The foundation stone for the airport was laid on 17 December 2010 by then-Chief Minister V. S. Achuthanandan. On 26 November 2013, KIAL and Larsen & Toubro Ltd signed a contract on construction work at the airport. In January 2014, the Kerala State Government Minister for Excise and Ports announced the Kerala State Government and AAI plan to sign an MoU on the equity structure of Kannur International Airport Limited. Construction work at the airport was inaugurated by Defence Minister and senior Congress leader A. K. Antony on 2 February 2014. On 29 February 2016, the first trial flight landed, and Chief Minister Oommen Chandy flagged off the inauguration of the runway. Kannur International Airport commenced operations on 9 December 2018. The first commercial aircraft to operate out of the airport was Air India Express IX 715 (Boeing 737-800) to Abu Dhabi, which took off at 10:13 (IST) on the same day. The flight was jointly flagged off by the Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan and Union Minister for Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu. Aircraft of several foreign airlines touched down for the first time at Kannur International Airport in June 2020 as part of the repatriation flights arranged owing to the COVID-19. Widebody aircraft also landed for the first time in June. Airbus A330-200 of Kuwait Airways, was the first foreign airline and also the first widebody aircraft that landed at Kannur. The aircraft of Kuwait Airways, Flydubai, Jazeera Airways, SalamAir, Gulf Air, Air Arabia, Etihad Airways, Saudia, and Oman Air operated to and from Kannur during June–August 2020 as repatriation/chartered flights.