The airport was opened for traffic in 1962 with one runway 3000 m long, taxiway 3350 m long, passenger terminal building, control tower, large apron for handling of aircraft and other contemporary equipment.
Later on a new passenger terminal has been built, apron extended, runway prolonged and in 1997 equipment for CAT II built in, enabling use of airport at low visibility conditions.

In July 2005 six contemporary telescopic passenger boarding bridges were put into operation, in May 2006 reconstructed international Terminal 2 put into operation and since November 2008 Belgrade "Nikola Tesla" Airport can be used in full capacity in conditions of extremely low visibility due to ILS CAT IIIb equipment and procedures which was for the first time in history of Belgrade Airport used on January 4, 2009.

Belgrade "Nikola Tesla" Airport accommodates technical maintenance company Jat Technics Ltd and technical maintenance of Aviogenex, operational departments of Air Traffic Control and Customs Authority, Air Museum, Jat Airways and SMATSA Training Centers, Helicopter Unit of the Ministry of Interior, etc.

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ILS categories

There are three categories of ILS which support similarly named categories of operation. Information below is based on ICAO - certain states may have filed differences.

• Category I (CAT I) - A precision instrument approach and landing with a decision height not lower than 200 feet (61 m) above touchdown zone elevation and with either a visibility not less than 800 meters (2,625 ft) or a runway visual range not less than 550 meters (1,804 ft).
• Category II (CAT II) - Category II operation: A precision instrument approach and landing with a decision height lower than 200 feet (61 m) above touchdown zone elevation but not lower than 100 feet (30 m), and a runway visual range not less than 300 meters (984 ft) for aircraft category A, B, C and not less than 350 meters (1,148 ft) for aircraft category D.
• Category III (CAT III) is further subdivided
  • Category III A - A precision instrument approach and landing with:
    • a) a decision height lower than 100 feet (30 m) above touchdown zone elevation, or no decision height; and
    • b) a runway visual range not less than 200 meters (656 ft).
  • Category III B - A precision instrument approach and landing with:
    • a) a decision height lower than 50 feet (15 m) above touchdown zone elevation, or no decision height; and
    • b) a runway visual range less than 200 meters (656 ft) but not less than 75 meters (246 ft).
  • Category III C - A precision instrument approach and landing with no decision height and no runway visual range limitations. A Category III C system is capable of using an aircraft's autopilot to land the aircraft and can also provide guidance along the runway surface.

In each case a suitably equipped aircraft and appropriately qualified crew are required. For example, Cat IIIc requires a fail-operational system, along with a Landing Pilot (LP) who holds a Cat IIIc endorsement in their logbook, Cat I does not. A head-up display which allows the pilot to perform aircraft maneuvers rather than an automatic system is considered as fail-operational. Cat I relies only on altimeter indications for decision height, whereas Cat II and Cat III approaches use radar altimeter to determine decision height.^[2]

An ILS is required to shut down upon internal detection of a fault condition as mentioned in the monitoring section. With the increasing categories, ILS equipment is required to shut down faster since higher categories require shorter response times. For example, a Cat I localizer must shutdown within 10 seconds of detecting a fault, but a Cat III localizer must shut down in less than 2 seconds.