It was opened in 1973 as the first of three planned relief airports around Copenhagen. These plans were shelved shortly after, and the two other relief airports never made it past the planning stage. The airport is owned and operated by Københavns Lufthavne A/S (Copenhagen Airports) which also operates Copenhagen's major airport at Kastrup. The airport had 25,053 passengers in 2003. The airport is fully equipped, but most flights from this airport are taxi-flights, small-plane regular flights to minor domestic islands or business jets.

It was once discussed to move all charter flights from Copenhagen Airport to this airport, but then the European aviation market changed as national airliners were allowed to be challenged by privately owned ones (1990s). The former charter airline companies in Europe then more or less had to either become regular challengers or vanish from the market. Hence, no flights with large aircraft have been moved to the airport. The runway is too short for fully loaded jet airliners such as the Boeing 737.

In 2002 the Ministry for Foreign Affairs Of Denmark reported that Ryanair was in discussions with the airport about beginning scheduled service to London Stansted. It was believed that the location fairly close to the centre of Copenhagen would attract the airline. The talks eventually came to nothing and Ryanair has not stated interest since. In October 2015, Ryanair instead started flights from the much larger and closer located Copenhagen Airport, which opened a low-cost terminal after Ryanair had used Malmö Airport for some years.

As of 2012, Roskilde Airport was planning an expansion of the runways and airport facilities to receive regular flights of low-cost international and charter operators, including aircraft types such as the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320-family sizes. However, due to lack of commitment from airline carriers, these plans have been postponed until further notice.