When the Army handed the field back to civil authority in November 1945, the Midlands needed an airport and the field was already built. The wartime 350th Bombardment Squadron technically existed there from 1947 to 1949 as part of the Air Force Reserve, but it was never equipped or manned, and the site reverted entirely to civilian use. The early commercial terminal went up in the early 1950s, then was replaced by another mid-century terminal a few years later. Since the late 1980s, the airport has been more or less continuously rebuilding: extended runways, a new parking garage in 2003, a $45 million terminal expansion and renovation, dedicated air cargo facilities, better Interstate access via I-77 and I-26. Today the airport covers 2,600 acres in unincorporated Lexington County, southwest of downtown Columbia, with two runways - 11/29 and 5/23 - serving about one million passengers a year. Pre-Great Recession peaks reached 1.5 million.

In August 1996, UPS Airlines opened an $80 million southeastern regional hub at Columbia, one of six US regional hubs the company built to extend its next-day, second-day, and third-day air service network. The hub buildings cover 352,000 square feet. The 44-acre ramp can hold 22 DC-8s simultaneously. Sorting machinery inside the hub can process 42,000 packages an hour, mostly between sunset and sunrise: night freighters arrive from Louisville, get broken down, get rebuilt into outbound feeder loads, and depart again before commercial passenger traffic picks up at dawn. ABX Air and FedEx Express also serve CAE. The cargo Foreign Trade Zone #127 sits adjacent to the runways. For pilots flying in at night, the UPS ramp lights up like a small city against the darker farmland to the south.

Four scheduled passenger airlines serve CAE today. American Airlines restored mainline service in June 2018 with two daily nonstop flights to Dallas/Fort Worth, with Miami added by the end of 2019. United is scheduled to resume Newark service in January 2026. Allegiant added flights in late 2024. The terminal includes the Everett Adams Memorial Chapel, gift shops, restaurants, free Wi-Fi, and a small number of charging stations. The Columbia Metro Airport Department of Public Safety - whose officers are SC Police Academy Class 1 certified and IFSAC Firefighter II qualified - provides airfield fire and rescue. Structural firefighting falls to Lexington County Fire Service. Roughly 174 aircraft operations a day pass through CAE: 46% general aviation, 23% air taxi, 23% scheduled airline, 8% military.

The airport's history of accidents is shorter than its history of safe operations, but it is part of the record. On February 26, 1971, a Volpar 18 crashed during a missed approach in fog, killing the pilot and seven passengers - the worst accident in the field's history. On December 20, 1973, a Beechcraft King Air descended below minimum and struck trees, killing two and seriously injuring a third. On September 19, 2008, a Learjet 60 belonging to Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker overran runway 11 during a rejected takeoff and burned in the hillside beyond the threshold. Four people died, including both pilots. Barker and DJ Adam Goldstein - DJ AM - survived the crash; Goldstein died of an overdose a year later. In December 2020, a Western Global Airlines 747 freighter clipped its right wingtip while taxiing for departure; no one was hurt. In August 2025, a Velocity XL kit-built piston single from Fort Lauderdale lost its nose gear on landing and shut the field for hours, but the pilot walked away. Most days, the only drama at CAE is whether the UPS night sort will get out before the morning commuters arrive.