By Sheree Hoddinett
Have the sound of planes flying overhead got you all wound up and bothered?
Turns out you’re not alone, with many residents across the local area and beyond not happy with flight path changes bringing aircraft across their once peaceful community at varying times of the day.
A plan for new flight paths from Airservices Australia is aiming to spread the noise across more areas, so it’s less concentrated in others. These changes come under the Noise Action Plan for Brisbane. The plan was developed to address impacts resulting from changes to Brisbane’s airspace, following the introduction of Brisbane Airport's new parallel runway in July 2020.
The Noise Action Plan for Brisbane comprises four packages of work outlining 11 recommendations and 82 individual actions. Airservices Australia is actively engaging with industry stakeholders and the wider Brisbane community on aircraft noise, discussing potential flight path options and outlining key delivery milestones across a three-year period (2023-2025).
Airservices Australia Head of Community Engagement Donna Marshall is aware of the impact aircraft noise has on residents due to community feedback, but highlights the efforts going in to finding a way to minimise the impact.
“For the Bribie Island community, we have had a lot of feedback, particularly from those on the southern part of Bribie about the impact of operations in that area,” Ms Marshall said. “We have concepts that have been developed with our consultants Trax International with the aim to reduce the impact, with one option that has the aircraft flying higher following a similar tracking to now, so by having the aircraft higher, that reduces noise levels. Then, there’s another option which completely changes where the aircraft flies, which would be more over the northern part of Bribie Island, rather than over that southern area.”
Feedback gathered during this phase will be used to create designs and will eventually be used for community engagement again, so there will be an opportunity to share your thoughts.
Changing a flight path is not a simple task and Ms Marshall said it was quite common for residents to ask questions about why aircraft couldn’t be kept over water all the time. Factors including weather, wind, air traffic and air space all come into play.
“Obviously there's a strong desire for communities not to have aircraft over them, but the simple fact is that aircraft operate safest when they are operating into the wind on arrival and departure,” Ms Marshall said. “And the wind is something we can’t control, so there are some communities where they may get both arrivals and departures depending on wind conditions. So, we're having a look at ways that we can try to reduce the impact of that concentration on them. It’s about finding the right balance.”
To give you an idea of the number of flights involved, using data from the last two weeks of August, here are some movements at Brisbane Airport compared to Sydney Airport: -
Daily movements: Brisbane about 650, Sydney about 925.
Morning peak hour movements: Brisbane about 57; Sydney about 75.
As much as Airservices Australia would like to keep everyone happy and just keep the flight paths and noise well away, it all comes down to one extremely important factor – safety.
“At the end of the day, our primary role is the safety of air navigation and when anybody gets on an aircraft, they know they will get to their destination safely,” Ms Marshall said. “Fortunately in Australia, most people don't have to worry about whether or not they'll get to and from their destination safely. So with safety a top priority, one of the key challenges in designing flight paths and keeping them away from communities is that there's a lot of places where flight paths will cross over each other. You'll have an arrival path that will cross over a departure path and those aircraft have to be separated by at least a thousand feet for that safety aspect.”
To keep up-to-date with all the latest information and stages of the Noise Action Plan for Brisbane, visit https://engage.airservicesaustralia.com/nap4b
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