Centrair serves the third largest metropolitan area in Japan, centered around the city of Nagoya. The region is a major manufacturing centre, hosting the headquarters and production facilities of Toyota and production facilities for Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation.

With much lobbying by local business groups such as Toyota, especially for 24-hour cargo flights, construction started August 2000, with a budget of ¥768 billion (around $7.3 billion), but through efficient management nearly ¥100 billion was saved. Penta-Ocean Construction was a major contractor. The artificial island on which the airport is located also houses the Aichi International Exhibition Center.

According to Japanese media sources, the yakuza group Kodo-kai earned an immense amount of money by being the sole supplier of dirt, rock, sand, and gravel for the airport's construction via a front company called Samix. Although several Samix executives were criminally indicted for racketeering, the charges were later dropped. According to the sources, Kodo-kai had informants working within Nagoya's police force who fed the organization inside information which allowed them to stay a step ahead of investigating authorities.

When Centrair opened on 17 February 2005, it took over almost all of the existing Nagoya Airport's commercial flights, and relieved the Tokyo and Kansai areas of cargo shipments. As a replacement for Nagoya Airport, it also inherited its IATA airport code NGO. The airport opened in time to service the influx of visitors for Expo 2005.

Route withdrawals

There were several withdrawals from Centrair after the airport commenced operations. American Airlines operated a route to Chicago for less than seven months in 2005, stating that the service was "not as profitable as we had hoped". In 2008, after a few years of service from Centrair, several airlines cancelled certain flights and put others on hiatus, including Malaysia Airlines' suspension of flights to Kuala Lumpur, Jetstar ending its airport operation, Continental Airlines stopping its Honolulu flight and United Airlines' suspension of flights to San Francisco, citing low premium cabin demand. This flight also continued to Chicago until 2007. Emirates and HK Express left the airport in 2009, though the latter returned in 2014. Japan Airlines also ended its flights to Paris in 2009 and Bangkok in 2020. Garuda Indonesia ended service from Denpasar in 2012, returned with the opening of direct flights from Jakarta in 2019, then suspended services once again in 2020. EVA Air left the airport in 2012. TransAsia Airways subsidiary V Air withdrew from Centrair and ended operations in 2016.

Northwest Airlines operated routes from Nagoya to Detroit, Guam, Manila, Saipan, and Tokyo-Narita prior to its 2009 merger with Delta Air Lines. Delta took over this operation and added a Honolulu route in 2010, growing to nine daily flights at Nagoya, but cancelled most of these services over the next decade. Delta's last two routes at Nagoya, Detroit and Honolulu, were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The Detroit route resumed on a weekly basis in 2021, but Delta announced its permanent cancellation in 2023. Finnair and Lufthansa suspended their flights from Helsinki and Frankfurt, respectively, to Nagoya during the COVID-19 pandemic; Finnair resumed the route in 2024 on a summer seasonal basis, becoming the only European airline to continue operating flights to Nagoya.

Aichi Sky Expo

An exposition center on the airport's island was opened on 30 August 2019. The exposition center has six exhibition halls each being 10,000 m2 (110,000 sq ft). Events held at the venue include the 2019 edition of the Wired Music Festival on 7 and 8 September.