Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Melbourne Airport
- This is about the Australian airport. See Melbourne International Airport for the airport of Melbourne, Florida.
Melbourne Airport is located in Tullamarine, Victoria, Australia, a northern suburb of Melbourne. It is a hub for Australian airline Qantas and has the IATA Airport Code MEL.
The airport was built to replace the nearby, outdated Essendon Airport, which did not have runways long enough to accommodate large aircraft such as the Boeing 747 and McDonnell Douglas DC-10 which began to appear in the late 1960s. It opened on 1 July 1970. Locals often refer to the airport as Tullamarine Airport or simply 'Tulla' after its location.
Melbourne Airport has three terminals. The international terminal has 14 gates. The two domestic terminals, one exclusively used by Qantas and its Jetstar subsidiary, and the multi-user South Terminal primarily used by Virgin Blue have 46 gates between them. In the 2003-2004 financial year 19 million passengers used Melbourne Airport and there were 165,000 aircraft movements.
Melbourne Airport has two intersecting runways. The north/south runway (designated 16/34) is 3,657 metres long, the east/west (9/27) is 2,286 metres long.
Recent works have been undertaken to prepare the airport for the late 2006 arrival of the double deck Airbus A380 which has been purchased by a number of airlines using the airport. These include construction of aerobridges with the ability to board both decks simultaneously to reduce turn around times and widening of the north/south runway by 15 metres.
A number of Australian airports were privatised in 1997 including Melbourne Airport which was leased to the Australia Pacific Airports Corporation , a company largely owned by a group of infrastructure investment funds , for a period of fifty years. Significant refurbishment of the rather dated terminals has been undertaken since privatisation and the airport now boasts a wide array of shops and food outlets.
In 2001 the state government investigated the construction of a heavy rail link to Melbourne Airport. Two options were considered, one branching off the Broadmeadows suburban line to the east, and another branching off the Albion goods line from the south, with the latter being the preferred option. Passenger numbers were not considered sufficient to justify the project and construction was deferred for at least ten years. The existing Skybus service was improved to compensate and remains the only available public transport service to the airport.
Airlines using Melbourne Airport
- Air China
- Air Mauritius
- Air Nauru
- Air New Zealand
- Air Pacific
- Air Paradise
- Alitalia
- Australian Airlines
- British Airways
- Cathay Pacific
- China Southern
- Emirates
- Freedom Air
- Garuda Indonesia
- Jetstar Airways
- Lauda Air
- Malaysia Airlines
- Norfolk Jet
- O' Connor Airlines
- Philippine Airlines
- Qantas
- Qatar Airways (Announced, but yet to commence)
- Regional Express
- Singapore Airlines
- Thai Airways International
- United Airlines
- Vietnam Airlines
- Virgin Blue
See also
External link
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