Melbourne Airport
international airport serving Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne Airport (IATA: MEL, ICAO: YMML), colloquially known as Tullamarine Airport, is an international airport serving Melbourne, Victoria, the second largest city in Australia. It is located in the suburb of Melbourne Airport and is approximately 22 kilometres (14 mi) northwest of the Melbourne city centre.
The airport served over 36 million passengers in 2025, making it the second busiest airport in Australia by passenger movements after Sydney Airport. The airport opened in 1970 in the suburb of Tullamarine, replacing Essendon Airport for all international flights. It is also the main international airport serving the whole state of Victoria. The airport was specifically built to operate without a curfew and is Australia's busiest 24-hour airport.
The airport has a consolidated four-terminal layout with one international terminal, one budget domestic terminal, and two standard domestic terminals, currently covering 1,070 hectares (2,600 acres) of airport property.
It serves as a major hub for Qantas, Virgin Australia and as Jetstar, it is also the headquarters for cargo airline Team Global Express.
History
Background
Prior to the opening of Melbourne Airport, Victoria's main airport was Essendon Airport. Designated an international airport in 1950, Essendon experienced rapid growth in the post-war period.
The public source identifies “Melbourne Airport” as international airport serving Melbourne, Australia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Melbourne, Airport and international.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Melbourne Airport”, the useful work is to connect “international airport serving Melbourne, Australia” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q733738. Authority coordinates are -37.673, 144.843. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025, 1970 and 1950.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Melbourne Airport”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Melbourne Airport primary sources, Melbourne Airport archive and Melbourne research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Melbourne Airport” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.