English Wikipedia traces Benina to the Italian Corpo Aeronautico Militare, which built it between the wars to support military operations. By 1941 it had a single firm-clay runway of 1,100 by 230 metres, lit for night landings, with fuel stored above and below ground and a satellite strip, Benina South. Italian bomber and transport groups flew SM.79s and SM.81s from here in 1940–1941, with CR.32 biplanes for defence.

As Rommel’s Afrika Korps arrived, the Luftwaffe moved in. From March 1941 to early 1942 Ju 52 transports, Ju 88 bombers and Bf 110 and Bf 109 fighters of units such as III./LG 1, III./ZG 26 and I./JG 27 used the field, and the Germans expanded it. The front swung back and forth across Cyrenaica; Wikipedia quotes Air Marshal Arthur Tedder describing the captured airfield in January 1942 as littered with aircraft in every state of repair.

British forces took the Benghazi area by the end of 1942, and the US Ninth Air Force arrived in February 1943. English Wikipedia places B-24 Liberators of the 376th Bombardment Group here; the group was part of Operation Tidal Wave, the low-level raid on the Ploesti oil refineries of 1 August 1943, which was flown from airfields around Benghazi and cost 53 B-24s and 310 aircrew killed or missing. In 1944 Nos. 351 and 352 Squadrons RAF, the first Yugoslav-manned fighter units, flew Hurricanes and Spitfires from Benina, and by the end of the war it was a staging post on the Cairo–Dakar air route.

Britain kept Benina after the war; in 1953 it had air bases at Tripoli, El Adem and Benina. After Gaddafi’s coup of 1 September 1969, the last British forces left in March 1970 and the airfield passed to the renamed Libyan Arab Republic Air Force.

In the early hours of 15 April 1986, Libyan time, Benina was one of five targets of Operation El Dorado Canyon. English Wikipedia says eight A-6E TRAM Intruders and six F/A-18A Hornets from USS Coral Sea were assigned to the airfield, attacking at about 02:00. The damage figures in the sources differ widely. The Wikipedia article on the raid lists three or four MiGs, two Mi-8 helicopters, a Fokker F27 transport and a small aircraft destroyed; the article on Benina airport gives two transports destroyed and 12 damaged, two helicopters destroyed and 10–15 damaged, and as many as 14 MiG-23s destroyed, with the runways heavily cratered. The range is published here because neither figure can be checked against an official battle-damage assessment.

The raid as a whole cost the United States one F-111F and its two crew, Captains Fernando Ribas-Dominicci and Paul Lorence. English Wikipedia gives about 40 reported Libyan casualties and an overall estimate of 60; those figures cover all targets, not Benina alone.

Benghazi was the centre of the February 2011 uprising, and Benina fell to the rebels on 23 February, according to English Wikipedia. It became the headquarters of the so-called Free Libyan Air Force: up to four MiG-21bis and MiG-21UM fighters that defected at Benina itself, at least two Mi-24 (Mi-25) helicopters captured there, and MiG-23s taken at Tobruk and Misrata.

Wikipedia counts 38 combat missions by rebel jets and helicopters in March 2011, before the no-fly zone took effect, among them strikes on loyalist columns near Brega and Ajdabiya on 15 and 16 March. On 19 March, during the second battle of Benghazi, a rebel MiG-23 was shot down over the city; the BBC reported the next day that it had been hit by friendly fire, and Wikipedia names the pilot as Colonel Mohammed Mbarak al-Okaili, who ejected too late.

Loyalist forces bombed the airport in March 2011 without damaging the facilities, Wikipedia records; from 19 March the French, British and American air campaign over Benghazi ended the threat.

In May 2014 Khalifa Haftar, a former army general, launched what he called Operation Dignity against Islamist factions in eastern Libya; Human Rights Watch reported that he described its aim as eradicating terrorism. Benina’s air arm sided with him. The airport closed to civil traffic on 16 May 2014, and international flights were suspended by August.

As most of Benghazi fell to the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries, supported by Ansar al-Sharia, the airport became one of the last areas still held by Haftar’s forces. English Wikipedia dates the battle of Benina airport from 1 August to 15 October 2014: the attackers launched a full offensive in early August, a suicide bombing in September killed 12 soldiers, and by October Haftar’s forces had taken the Sidi Faraj bridge and pushed the attackers back to the city centre. Wikipedia names Saqr Geroushi among the commanders; he was reinstated as head of the LNA’s air force in January 2015. The overall casualty totals in Wikipedia’s infobox could not be tied to a checked source and are not given here.

The battle for Benghazi itself lasted until 2017. Wikipedia reports that a French special forces and DGSE detachment based at Benina assisted the LNA, made public in February 2016, and that Geroushi said 20 troops from the United States, France and the United Kingdom were stationed at the base. Those are his and the reporters’ statements; the governments concerned did not publish basing details. The civil airport reopened for limited flights on 15 July 2017.

When the LNA marched on Tripoli in April 2019, Benina was its rear base. On 13 April 2019 the Libya Observer, a Tripoli-leaning outlet, reported that two cargo aircraft from Abu Dhabi had landed at Benina carrying UAE officers specialised in operating drones, with military equipment; it cited military sources and air-traffic monitoring sites. The UAE did not confirm the flights in the sources checked.

Civil flights at Benina were suspended for about 18 months during the Tripoli war and resumed in October 2020, after the ceasefire. Today the runways are shared by Benina International Airport and the LNA. Neither the LNA nor any government publishes which aircraft are based here, and this page does not list any.