Melbourne's third airport proposed: where should it go?
By John Walton, January 25 2012
A third airport for Melbourne has been proposed for the south-eastern side of the city, with an influential employers' organisation suggestion that some domestic flights could be served from either Tyabb or Tooradin.
Tyabb has been specifically mooted by the Victorian Employers' Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in an interview with The Age, with Tooradin or other options in West or South Gippsland also being considered.
While Tooradin is further to the east than Tyabb, both locations have existing small airfields and lie roughly within an hour of Melbourne's CBD, around 60km to the south-east.
Tyabb and Tooradin are to Melbourne's east: a potentially useful option for business travellers living that side of Port Phillip Bay.
Crucially, both options have rail lines only a few kilometres away -- a finger in the eye of Melbourne International Airport's over-priced and under-par Skybus service.
The new airport would supplement the existing main international airport at Tullamarine and the secondary low-cost option at Avalon, near Geelong to the west of Melbourne.
What's your take: are either of these locations suitable for a domestic and regional alternative to Tullamarine, serving Melbourne's populated south-eastern suburbs rather than the CBD?
Aviation journalist and travel columnist John took his first long-haul flight when he was eight weeks old and hasn't looked back since. Well, except when facing rearwards in business class.
Virgin Australia - Velocity Rewards
05 Jan 2012
Total posts 335
What about Moorabin?
04 Nov 2010
Total posts 670
The hundreds of millions that would be spent on a third airport for Melbourne should be put towards a high-speed railway line between Melbourne and Sydney!
24 Oct 2011
Total posts 160
Yes put Australia in the third world country list when it comes to high speed rail. Along with the USA.
Japan, China, German, France, Spain, England, Korea and more all have high speed rail.
But what do we expect? our pollies can't even build rail from Melbourne CBD to the Melbourne Airport LOL.
27 Jan 2012
Total posts 117
yup you got it, a nice high speed train, clean and green, fast and easy!
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
05 Jun 2014
Total posts 210
Great idea this would take away alot of demand for Domestic air travel too! Then we wouldn't need a new airport
23 Jan 2012
Total posts 3
There are several factors that make this sensible. One is that the proposal is to find and preserve a site for use in the 2030s, thus influencing the provision of good access. Another is that the long term average growth for Melbourne, if the existing relativities in air travel activity in Australia continue, is forecast by separate Airbus and Boeing CMOs as around 5.9% per annum. This means that in another 20 years, if nothing else changes, Melbourne's airports will be much busier than now. However Melbourne's business lobby is arguing that Melbourne will also take growth off Sydney, and that its population will nearly double by the 2040-2050 period. If we paid heed to the way Melbourne is already expanding, theses sites make a great deal of sense, as does choosing and preserving one of them.
Neither would make sense in 2012, but this is about 2032 or 2042.
I reported on this in some further detail in Plane Talking here:
https://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2012/01/16/a-tale-of-two-cities-and-their-attitudes-to-air-travel/
25 Jan 2012
Total posts 29
How many airports does one city need? Wouldn't the money be better spent increasing capacity at either of the two airports.. The more airports, the more confusion for passengers on where they should fly too.
23 Jan 2012
Total posts 3
I have little doubt that in the medium term the forecasts are right, and Melbourne will more than double its activity to around 80 million passengers a year, for a city of up to 8 million people, much of it flown by very large jets from Asian destinations.
One thing the proponents of reserving the necessary land now didn't ask for is unique ownership. I think it critical that as is the case today with AVV and MEL, the different airports have different owners, who compete rather than collude, delivering benefits to consumers and business accounts alike.
27 Jan 2012
Total posts 117
a lot will come in over the years that affects this topic
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
05 Jun 2014
Total posts 210
AVV only has one JQ landing and one JQ takeoff per day to SYD plus sometimes to BNE i think. Surely we could make better use of the facilities there
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