Did you know more than 200,000 people turned out for Auckland Airport’s opening air pageant in 1966?

When Auckland Airport opened on 29 January 1966, the city treated it as a public event. The airport says more than 200,000 Aucklanders attended a three-day air pageant celebrating the opening.

The land already had an aviation story. The Auckland Aero Club was founded in 1928 on the farmland where the airport now stands, and in 1936 some 6,000 New Zealanders gathered to welcome Jean Batten home after her record-breaking flight from England. The airport also notes that the site’s human history goes back more than 800 years, to the arrival of the Tainui waka in the mid-1300s.

In its first year the airport connected 700,000 travellers and handled 8,300 tonnes of domestic and international freight. In 2025 it connected 18.9 million travellers, and the airport says almost half a billion people, 458 million, have passed through since 1966. To keep pace with larger aircraft, the runway has been extended twice, first for the Boeing 747 and later for the Airbus A380.

The anniversary figures come from the airport’s own January 2026 statement. The airport is in the middle of a long building programme, so passengers should check its official pages for the latest terminal arrangements, especially when connecting between domestic and international flights.