The airport was constructed in 1989. Between that year and 1991, regional airline Vayudoot flew to Madras, Neyveli, and Bangalore, however the flights were not successful and all were ended. The airport remained in disuse for the following two decades. In June 2007, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between the local government and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for expansion of the airport. For the first phase, 19.92 hectares of land were acquired at ? 18.95 crore. Then the new terminal was constructed and the runway extended by 260 m (853 ft), allowing for the landing of ATR aircraft. This phase was completed in late 2012. The second phase of expansion involves acquiring 200 more acres of land to extend the runway by an additional 1,100 m (3,609 ft), allowing larger jet aircraft to land at the airport. The new terminal was inaugurated with the arrival of a SpiceJet Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 aircraft on 17 January 2013 from Bangalore. However, this daily service lasted for only a little over one year as the airline withdrew the flight citing low number of passengers. The following year, the airport once again was brought back into operation when Alliance Air commenced flights from Bangalore on 14 April 2015, subsidised by the Pondicherry Government. These flights were suspended six months later due to "payment issues". In October 2016, the Pondicherry government signed a Tripartite MoU with the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) and AAI in New Delhi to operationalise the airport under the Regional Connectivity Scheme. Subsequently, SpiceJet was awarded the Hyderabad-Pondicherry route under the scheme in March 2017 and the airline commenced operations from 16 August 2017. SpiceJet later resumed its flight to Bangalore from Pondicherry in February 2018.