How technology is enabling Melbourne Airport’s growth

Melbourne Airport, currently Australia’s second busiest, is aiming to overtake Sydney to become the country’s number one destination airport.

For Melbourne Airport CIO Anthony Tomai and his team, that overall strategic objective fuels their approach to create and deliver tech innovation at the airport campus at Tullamarine, northwest of the city.

“The vision is to become Australia’s favourite airport destination,” he says. “Technology has a key element in that broader corporate strategy in that last year was the first time we embedded technology as part of our corporate scorecard. The team and I pulled together a technology strategy focused on enabling the corporate strategy.”

Melbourne Airport has been connecting Victoria to the world for 50 years, and December 2023 was the airport’s busiest month since the Covid-19 pandemic, with a total of over three million passengers. And those numbers are expected to grow to about 76 million by 2042. Key to this is construction of a third runway. Currently, 45 planes take off and land per hour and this new runway could take the airport up to 90 planes per hour. In addition, the Melbourne Airport Rail, connecting the airport to the suburban network, subject to approvals, is expected to be delivered by 2029.

Tomai and the team are responsible for a wide range of operations at the airport, including operational technology as well as corporate IT.

“The technology operation here is quite expansive in that we manage all facets of traditional enterprise IT,” he says. “The main bit that has a lot more focus is the operational technology, and that’s everything from a kiosk to print your boarding pass and a bag tag, to the auto bag drop technology, which takes your bag from the conveyor at check-in to the plane. All of that operational technology is supported by my team.”