Dicko I think your right. If Avalon tower was manned then the A320 would have been in the AVALON CONTROL ZONE. If not he still would have been in the MELBOURNE CTA3 ZONE (I could be wrong). With all that said you still need clearence to land at YMAV tower or no-tower, Jetstar fly in and out of there, Qantas do there 747 maintenance, and on top of that the odd GA training may take place. So if YMAV tower is not manned then I believe clearence is given by YMML tower.A funny thing is my mum and sister were flying with Tiger to the Gold Coast the day everyone was back up and running from the ash cloud. However Tiger took the opportunity to cancel their flights for the next two days and use the ash cloud as the excuse (which had now passed on), mum said that Jetstar were still flying and the response she got was 'Tiger Airways operate completey different aircraft'. Boy would I have loved to tear that woman apart with that answer.

Dicko I think your right. If Avalon tower was manned then the A320 would have been in the AVALON CONTROL ZONE. If not he still would have been in the MELBOURNE CTA3 ZONE (I could be wrong). With all that said you still need clearence to land at YMAV tower or no-tower, Jetstar fly in and out of there, Qantas do there 747 maintenance, and on top of that the odd GA training may take place. So if YMAV tower is not manned then I believe clearence is given by YMML tower.

To give a landing clearance, you would have to be able to see that there are no obstructions on the runway... a bit hard for the poor guy at YMML to see a runway almost 30NM away! You don't need a landing clearance at an uncontrolled aerodrome. Airspace classification does not affect this.Cheers,Nick Jones

There you go......coming from a guy with 5 hours in a 152!I did just read that up until 2009 the tower was only opened for the airshow and the 2 Grand Prixs.

These are the preliminary reports. Check out the 1st and 4th reports.http://www.atsb.gov....x?mode=Aviation