The airport is on the site of Italy's first air race meeting in September 1909, and the first outside France. The meeting was attended by the aviators Louis Blériot and Glenn Curtiss, among others. Gabriele D'Annunzio flew in one of Curtiss's planes and drew on the experience of the meeting in his novel Forse che sì forse che no (1910). Franz Kafka and Max Brod also attended and separately published accounts.

Ryanair operated scheduled flights to and from London Stansted Airport and Cagliari-Elmas Airport until the end of October 2010, when the airline decided to move these flights to the nearby Verona-Villafranca Airport.

Passenger traffic has collapsed from strong year on year growth in 2007–2008, from almost 35,000 passengers a month in June 2008 to only 311 passengers in June 2013, a drop of 99% over 5 years.

Brescia Airport is the main sorting base for Poste Italiane's air mail: DHL and Poste Air Cargo postal and cargo flights depart and arrive every night.

The airport also benefits from an intensification of freight traffic, thanks to a partnership agreement signed between the Poste Italiane and Amazon. The cargo trend has seen a further increase since March 2017 with the start of the activities of SW Italia and Silk Way West Airlines, which operate weekly flights between Brescia, Baku and Hong Kong. Since November 2018, the airport has also become one of the main base for cargo flights of the international courier DHL.