Abstract: The underwater acoustic field excited by airborne source is sampled by an underwater vertical line array, meanwhile the copy sound filed is calculated by the wavenumber integral model (OASES model). Then the matched filed processor (MFP) is introduced to indicate the airborne source location. Numerical simulation is carried out to verify the ranging ability of MFP to the air borne sound source, wide band processing is introduced to suppress the periodic side lobe. An experiment about air borne sound is conducted in the South China Sea. The conventional MFP is utilized to locate 32 sets of airborne sound source within 700 m. The range measurement corresponds to the GPS result in the majority situation, bias is more susceptible to the further source due to a lower signal-noise ratio.