Melbourne Moorabbin Airport
Melbourne Moorabbin Airport
Moorabbin (Harry Hawker) Airport (IATA: MBW, ICAO: YMMB) is a general aviation airport for light aircraft located in between the southern Melbourne suburbs of Heatherton, Cheltenham, Dingley Village and Mentone. It also receives commercial airline service. The airport grounds are treated as their own suburb, and share the postcode 3194 with the neighbouring suburb of Mentone. With a total of 274,082 aircraft movements, Moorabbin Airport was the second busiest airport in Australia measured by aircraft movements for the calendar year of 2011.
Location
37.978°S, 145.100°E · 15 m s. n. m. (50 ft)
General data
Runways · 5
Lengths and surfaces from the public OurAirports register; open runways only.
Radio frequencies · 5
Tower
Ground
ATIS (automatic information)
Flight information
Reference frequencies for enthusiasts, from OurAirports (community database, public domain), checked on Oct 16, 2026. They may be outdated or incomplete and do not replace the AIP or current charts: not for navigation. In Europe the published frequency may be an 8.33 kHz channel (e.g., 118.505 for 118.500). In MHz.
History
By 1946, Essendon Airport was Australia's busiest airport and Melbourne's only public airport, but was becoming congested even before expansion plans for Essendon were announced. Funding for the construction of a secondary airport was announced by Prime Minister Ben Chifley on 6 November 1946.
The control tower opened on 15 December 1949 for training. Originally the intent was to name the airport "Mentone" but this was abandoned after a potential clash with the then French airport in Menton. Similarly, Cheltenham was discarded due to similarities to the Gloucestershire Airport near Cheltenham in South West England. The name comes from City of Moorabbin, the municipality in which it was then situated.
The control tower opened on 15 December 1949 and flying commenced on 31 December.
The airport was renamed to Moorabbin (Harry Hawker) Airport on 22 January 1989, after pioneering Australian aviator Harry George Hawker, on the centenary date of Hawker's birth.
Airlines operating here · 1
Other airlines with direct routes
Airlines with current passenger routes from here, according to Wikipedia route tables cross-checked from both ends (October 2026).
Photo: Phil Vabre · GFDL · view original
Data from OurAirports (public domain) · destinations and airlines from Wikipedia route tables (CC BY-SA, 2026), unless another source is given · profile and photo from Wikidata/Wikimedia Commons (CC0 / CC) · summary and history from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).
Cite
To cite this page in academic work, an article or Wikipedia, choose the style and copy the reference. The access date is today.
This page was last updated on October 15, 2026
APA
Vuelopedia. (2026, October 15). Melbourne Moorabbin Airport (MBW). Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/MBW
MLA
“Melbourne Moorabbin Airport (MBW).” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 15 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/airport/MBW. Accessed 23 Oct. 2026.
Chicago
Vuelopedia. “Melbourne Moorabbin Airport (MBW).” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 15, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/MBW.
Harvard
Vuelopedia (2026) Melbourne Moorabbin Airport (MBW). Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/MBW (Accessed: 23 October 2026).
BibTeX
@misc{vuelopedia_en_airport_mbw,
author = {{Vuelopedia}},
title = {{Melbourne Moorabbin Airport (MBW)}},
publisher = {Fundación Poderia},
year = {2026},
date = {2026-10-15},
url = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/MBW},
howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/MBW}},
urldate = {2026-10-23},
note = {Accessed 2026-10-23}
}Wikipedia
{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/MBW |title=Melbourne Moorabbin Airport (MBW) |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-15 |access-date=2026-10-23 |language=en}}