Brasilia's airport is older than the city it serves. A landing strip was built on the central plateau in the mid 1950s to fly in the planners and materials needed to build Brazil's new capital in the empty interior. It handled arriving flights years before the city was even opened in 1960. Everything needed to raise a capital from nothing had to arrive first by air.
The airport formally opened in 1957 and grew alongside the capital, drawing steady traffic from every corner of the country. Because Brasilia sits near the middle of Brazil, it became a natural connecting point for a country the size of a continent. The airline Gol built its transfer schedules around that fact. Government workers, officials, and diplomats made up a large share of the airport's early passengers.
The terminal was expanded many times, and a major rebuild before the 2014 World Cup added a large new pier, roughly doubling space. In 2012 the airport was handed to a private company to run, one of the first such deals in Brazil. It carries the name of Juscelino Kubitschek, the president who willed Brasilia into existence, and usually ranks among Brazil's three or four busiest airports.