The airport, originally called Santo Amaro do Ipitanga Airport, was established in 1925. In 1941 Panair do Brasil participating in the World War II efforts with the support of the American and Brazilian governments completely rebuilt the facility. On 20 December 1955, the airport had its name changed for the first time: it became known as Dois de Julho International Airport, celebrating Bahia Independence Day. This is still the name by which the population of Salvador da Bahia call the facility. On 16 June 1998 the airport name was again changed to honor Luís Eduardo Maron Magalhães (1955–1998) an influential politician of the state of Bahia. This second change remains however controversial and there have been attempts to revert it. Since 2017 the concessionary has been using the Trade name Salvador Bahia Airport. The airport is located in an area of more than 6 million square meters between sand dunes and native vegetation. The lush, bamboo-covered road to the airport has become one of the scenic attractions of Salvador da Bahia. A brand new passenger terminal was opened in 1998, replacing an original outdated terminal. This new terminal continued to be upgraded and was completed by the end of year 2000. The main terminal, which includes a shopping mall has 69,400 m2, 11 jetways and a capacity to handle 6,000,000 passengers/year. Traffic has been growing at an average of 14% per year. Responding to critiques to the situation of its airports, on May 18, 2011, Infraero released a list evaluating some of its most important airports according to its saturation levels. According to the list, Salvador da Bahia was considered to be in good situation, operating with less than 70% of its capacity. Previously operated by Infraero, on 16 March 2017, the concession of the facility was won by Vinci SA, for which it paid R$ 2,35 billions (€ 640 millions). The concession is for a period of 30 years. The new concessionary then planned to duplicate the passenger terminal. On 26 April 2018, the Aeroporto station on Line 2 of the Salvador subway was opened to the public.