Sion airport opened in June 1935 and, lying inside the Réduit, was one of the sixteen protected wartime airfields; the A9 motorway beside it was built as an emergency runway and the field carries arrester gear for Hornet hook landings. In the Cold War it was the seat of Flugplatzregiment 1 with its four Valais war bases (Sion, Turtmann, Raron, Ulrichen), and after 1994 it was one of only four Swiss jet bases with Payerne, Meiringen and Emmen, home to Flugplatzkommando 14 and the militia Tiger squadron 19 “Swans”, host to Mirage IIIRS, F-5, F/A-18 and every Pilatus type, and venue of the big Valais air shows of 1982, 1986, 1989, 1997 and 2017.

The November 2013 stationing decision dropped Sion to save money. The last refresher course of Flugplatzkommando 14, the “Last Call”, took place in January 2017; Hornets trained here in May 2017 and three Tiger squadrons in autumn 2017, and the Federal Council’s Sachplan Militär of 8 December 2017 ended military use on 31 December 2017. The VBS kept the infrastructure until the end of 2021 and handed the airfield to civil responsibility on 1 January 2022; it remains an emergency alternate for the air force against an annual payment of CHF 300,000, and the air force apprentice workshop for polymechanics stays until 2029.

Sion is where MiGFlug (Zurich, since 2004) offers its L-39 Albatros jet flights over the Valais Alps from the former military runway.