Copenhagen Airport opened in April 1925 at Kastrup on the island of Amager, making it one of the oldest civil airports in the world still in operation. The first terminal was a wooden building, and early traffic consisted of fabric-winged airliners hopping across the Baltic. In 1939 the airport gained a landmark: the elegant streamline-moderne terminal by architect Vilhelm Lauritzen, considered a masterpiece of Danish functionalism. Remarkably, in 1999 the entire Lauritzen building was jacked up and moved across the airfield to preserve it.
After the Second World War, Copenhagen became the main hub of Scandinavian Airlines System when the carrier was formed in 1946 from the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish flag airlines, giving Kastrup an outsized international role for a small country. Jet-age terminals followed, Terminal 3 opened in 1998 with its dramatic wedge-shaped roof.
A metro line and the Oresund Bridge rail link tied the airport to both Copenhagen and southern Sweden from around 2000. Today Copenhagen is Scandinavia's busiest airport, handling around 30 million passengers a year, serving as SAS's primary intercontinental hub and a growing base for low-cost carriers, with expansion plans aiming toward 40 million.