Before Soekarno-Hatta opened for domestic flights on May 1, 1985, Jakarta's aviation was split awkwardly between two airports. Kemayoran Airport, the city's original field, had been overwhelmed by growth and sat dangerously close to the military airspace around Halim Perdanakusuma. Civil corridors narrowed as traffic increased, and by the early 1980s the situation was untenable. The new airport, named for Indonesia's founding president Sukarno and vice-president Mohammad Hatta, was built roughly 20 kilometers northwest of central Jakarta at Benda, Tangerang. Construction began after a four-year contract was signed on May 20, 1980, with a consortium including French firms Sainraptet Brice, SAE, and Colas alongside Indonesia's PT Waskita Karya. Terminal 1 opened in 1985 for domestic service. Six years later, in 1991, Terminal 2 took over international operations from Halim Perdanakusuma, consolidating Jakarta's commercial aviation under one roof -- or rather, under dozens of garden-flanked pavilions.

The design earned the 1995 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and the reasons are visible at every turn. Terminals 1 and 2 follow a spanning-fan layout, with main entrances connecting to waiting and boarding pavilions through corridors that open onto landscaped tropical gardens filled with decorative and flowering plants. The pavilion roofs echo the layered silhouettes of traditional Javanese pendopo halls. Inside, the diversity of Indonesia's cultures unfolds in carved wooden details: Javanese, Balinese, Sumatran, Dayak, Torajan, and Papuan motifs appear on walls, doors, and gates. The kala-makara theme -- the giant head and mythical fish-elephant creature found at ancient temples like Borobudur and Prambanan -- recurs on stair railings and entryways. Terminal 3, opened in stages beginning in 2011, breaks from this tradition with a contemporary glass-and-steel aesthetic and an eco-friendly design, though it maintains the airport's commitment to green space with rainwater harvesting and intelligent lighting systems that adjust to ambient weather conditions.

The numbers place Soekarno-Hatta among the busiest airports in Asia. For 2024, the airport recorded approximately 54.8 million passengers, making it a close competitor to Singapore's Changi and Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi for the title of Southeast Asia's busiest hub. The Jakarta-Singapore route alone ranks among the world's busiest international air corridors, with Singapore Airlines operating more than 70 weekly flights on the pairing. Domestically, the Jakarta-Surabaya route was ranked ninth busiest in the world by IATA in 2016. Three parallel runways handle up to 114 flights per hour since the third runway opened in August 2019, up from 81 per hour on two runways. The airport handled 348,088 aircraft movements in 2023. An ambitious plan to build a fourth terminal and push capacity toward 100 million annual passengers was cancelled in November 2024 by the minister of state-owned enterprises, citing lower-than-projected traffic -- a pragmatic acknowledgment that growth projections do not always survive contact with reality.

Each terminal reflects the period in which it was built. Terminal 1, the 1985 original, sits on the airport's southern side with three sub-terminals -- A, B, and C -- each served by seven gates. Terminal 2 mirrors it on the northwestern side, also with three sub-terminals, D, E, and F. Terminals 2D and 2E were converted into an international low-cost carrier terminal in 2019, while 2F began exclusively handling hajj and umrah pilgrimage flights in 2025. Terminal 3, the newest and largest, serves as the base for flag carrier Garuda Indonesia and its subsidiary Citilink. Its 422,804 square meters of floor space can handle 25 million passengers annually. A semi-driverless Skytrain -- a 3.05-kilometer automated people mover built by Indonesia's PT LEN Industri with South Korean partner Woojin Industries -- connects all three terminals and the airport rail station free of charge, with trains spaced five minutes apart. The rail link itself carries passengers to central Jakarta in 45 minutes.

Soekarno-Hatta's history includes moments that test any airport's resilience. On April 27, 2003, a bomb hidden under a table at a KFC stall in Terminal 2's domestic departure hall exploded during lunch hours, injuring ten people. A 17-year-old named Yuli suffered injuries so severe that both her legs had to be amputated. Investigators connected the attack to the Free Aceh Movement separatist conflict. The airport has also weathered severe weather incidents: in 2003 a Star Air Boeing 737 landed 500 meters past the threshold during heavy rain and slid off the runway, and in 2009 a Lion Air MD-90 overran the same runway in strong winds. The most devastating event connected to the airport occurred on January 9, 2021, when Sriwijaya Air Flight 182, a Boeing 737 bound for Borneo, plunged into the Java Sea six minutes after takeoff, killing all 62 people on board. These events shadow the airport's otherwise steady growth, reminders that aviation's scale comes with proportional consequence.