Departure
96%
vs 95% ▲ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Melbourne Orlando International Airport (KMLB) sits on Florida's Space Coast, a mile and a half northwest of downtown Melbourne and about 70 miles southeast of Orlando. It combines a full-length, ILS-equipped main runway with scheduled airline service and a busy general-aviation and maintenance base, making it a useful and well-equipped stop for visiting VFR and IFR pilots alike.
Melbourne Orlando International Airport is a public airport owned by the City of Melbourne and operated by the Melbourne Airport Authority. It serves Brevard County and the wider Space Coast area of Florida, offering both scheduled airline flights and a significant amount of general-aviation and business-aviation traffic. For a visiting sim pilot it is notable for its long primary runway, ILS approach, and its history as a former naval air station.
The airport lies 1.5 miles northwest of downtown Melbourne in Brevard County, Florida, and about 70 miles southeast of Orlando, on central Florida's Space Coast. It is reached by NASA Boulevard (State Road 508). Traffic in the area is worked by Orlando Approach/Departure, which is available on 132.65 MHz for arrivals and departures to and from the field.
The airport has three physical runway pairs. The main runway, 09R/27L, is a hard-surfaced, lit runway of some 10,168 ft in length in the 09R direction (listed as 9,470 ft for the reciprocal 27L), and carries an ILS on the 09R approach. A second parallel runway, 09L/27R, is 5,990 ft long, hard-surfaced and lit in both directions. A shorter crosswind runway, 05/23, is 3,001 ft long, also hard-surfaced and lit. Field elevation is 26 ft.
Orlando Approach/Departure is available on 132.65 MHz, with the airport's ATIS broadcast on 132.55 MHz. The control tower operates on 118.2 MHz, which also serves as the CTAF; Ground control is on 121.9 MHz, and Clearance Delivery is also listed on 121.9 MHz. A separate operations frequency, 123.2 MHz, is used by Grumman Ops, and St Petersburg Radio can be reached on 122.6 MHz. Unicom is available on 122.95 MHz. A VOR-DME is located on the airfield, and the ILS on runway 09R provides an instrument approach.
Melbourne Orlando is a tower-controlled airport, and inbound pilots should expect to receive joining and pattern instructions directly from Melbourne Tower or, further out, from Orlando Approach on 132.65 MHz. No specific published circuit heights or noise-abatement procedures are given in the available sources.
The airport is reached from the Melbourne area via NASA Boulevard (State Road 508), a useful landmark for pilots inbound from the west. It lies close to downtown Melbourne and the Indian River Bluff area, with the Space Coast's Atlantic coastline providing a broad visual reference to the east.
The airport's origins trace back to 1928, when a Pitcairn Aircraft landed on a cow pasture strip north of the Kissimmee Highway; airmail service began later that year when the site was designated a fuelling stop. In 1933 the City of Melbourne acquired 160 acres west of Indian River Bluff for a new airport, which was developed and operated as Naval Air Station Melbourne during the Second World War. The field was returned to the city as surplus property after the war and formally deeded to Melbourne in 1947, operating as a municipal airport until 1967, when the Melbourne Airport Authority was created to plan, operate, maintain and develop it under the name Melbourne Municipal Airport. It was later renamed Cape Kennedy Regional Airport and then, in 1973, Melbourne Regional Airport. Scheduled airline service began in 1953, and the airport went on to host flights by Eastern Airlines, National Airlines, People Express, Delta, Presidential Airways, American Airlines, Continental and Spirit Airlines over the following decades, including National's first jet airliner flights in 1963 using Douglas DC-8s. The airport's proximity to NASA's Kennedy Space Center made it part of Eastern Airlines' 1967 'Space Corridor' routes linking Melbourne with Huntsville, St Louis and Seattle. The airport was renamed Orlando Melbourne International Airport in 2015, and changed its name again to Melbourne Orlando International Airport in May 2021 following a legal challenge over the earlier name.
Melbourne Orlando International Airport remains an active joint-use field, combining scheduled airline service with substantial general aviation and maintenance activity; the FAA recorded 264 based aircraft as of 2020. Aircraft maintenance is carried out on the field by Aeromod International, which took over a hangar previously used by MidAirUSA after that company's 2016 bankruptcy. General-aviation operators arriving from abroad can make use of on-field Customs and Border Protection procedures, as set out in the CBP's airport fact sheet for KMLB.
