Melbourne suburbs asked to share pain from new airport runway

Residents in Melbourne’s northern and western suburbs will be asked to share the pain of increased aircraft noise and manage the impact of Melbourne Airport’s $3 billion new runway.

The airport will start public consultation on Tuesday on different operating modes for its three runways to gauge how communities want the different flight paths used and how best to ease the effects of noise pollution.

Federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King approved the contentious new runway in September last year, on the condition the airport develops a plan to distribute aircraft noise pollution more equally across the suburbs.

The 24-hour-a-day airport’s operators want to have its new runway operating by 2031 and say it is needed to deal with growing passenger numbers, which it forecasts will double to 83 million a year by 2046.

The new north-south runway will sit parallel to an existing north-south runway, and perpendicular to an east-west runway.

Melbourne Airport had intended to use the two north-south runways for as many flights as possible, with nearby suburbs Bulla, Keilor and Kealba bearing the brunt of increased noise.

The new runway was also forecast to increase noise across Sunshine, Braybrook, West Footscray and Williamstown, and further afield in East Melbourne and Port Melbourne.

Planes using the east-west runway fly over Broadmeadows, Thomastown, Bundoora and Greensborough, and those suburbs were previously expected to experience a significant decline in aircraft noise when the third runway opened.

But under a noise-sharing plan being developed, prioritising the east-west runway outside peak periods is one option to ease the impact on western suburbs residents.

Melbourne Airport’s head of master planning, Rosie Offord, said the airport would still prioritise the two north-south runways during the morning and evening peak periods to maximise capacity.

“But in off-peak periods, we can use the east-west as much as possible to provide communities to the north and south of the airport with periods of respite,” Offord said.

“Noise-sharing doesn’t mean equal distribution of flights over suburbs. What it means is managing aircraft noise so communities affected get periods of respite.”

Independent consultants Trax Asia Pacific and GHD are developing the noise-sharing plan and running the community consultation.

Another operating mode is using the parallel runways with both arriving and departing aircraft travelling north, but that will require perfectly clear and still conditions.

Planes need to take off and land into the wind, and Offord said weather conditions would always determine what operating modes could be used at any given time.

As part of its approval for the runway, Melbourne Airport was also told to rebuild the east-west runway to its full length after the third runway is built, to maximise its potential use.

Shannon Meilak lives in Keilor Lodge, which is expected to bear the brunt of increased noise pollution, and is a lead campaigner of the No Third Tulla Runway campaign.

She said a noise-sharing plan was no consolation for what residents had consistently asked for: a nighttime curfew, such as the one in place at Sydney Airport.

“You will get the respite when they determine it’s convenient for them, not when the residents need it,” Meilak said.

Airservices Australia, the federal government aviation manager, is developing a plan to share aircraft noise over Brisbane after the opening of Brisbane Airport’s second runway in 2020 triggered a backlash from communities angered by the increase in noise pollution.

A spokesperson for Airservices said it was working with Melbourne Airport on its noise-sharing plan and would need to endorse the plan before it was approved.

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