[Peetwo]

Dicky King and the Moorabbin Airport quandary?? 

Via Oz Flying: 

Moorabbin Airport Australia's busiest flight training airport for second year in a row

25 September 2024



For the 2024 financial year, Moorabbin Airport was once more the busiest general aviation flight training airport in Australia.

It's also the busiest airport in Victoria, recording 271,864 movements across all aircraft types—accounting for nine per cent of all flight movements in Australia. This is the second year that Moorabbin Airport has taken out the top spot for flight training, up from 237,410 total movements in FY23.
Notably, the airport was the only metropolitan flight training airport to experience growth during the period.

Moorabbin Airport Corporation (MAC) CEO Travis Brown said the growth is testament to MAC’s aviation development strategy, which continues to return results year on year.

“Our continued investment in aviation supports safe and industry-leading general aviation activity. Guided by our safety framework, our focus strongly remains on growing safe and viable aviation activities and investing in quality aviation infrastructure and training facilities," he said.

The results are pleasing and reinforce the aviation development strategy in the 2021 Master Plan, which plans for the development of new and upgraded training sites to accommodate over 1,800 students per year and additional aircraft parking. MAC is committed to nurturing strong relationships with its aviation customers and ensuring their ongoing success. Notably, MAC’s top five flight training operators—CAE, RVAC, Learn to Fly, Avia and Professional Helicopter Services—saw increased growth in their individual movements and continue as long-term tenants.

“We’re pleased to have strong working relationships with industry stakeholders, including CASA, Airservices Australia and our aviation customers from big to small. Our ongoing commitment to improve and expand our Airport facilities ensures the Airport will remain a leader in flight training in Australia,” says Brown.

Airservices Australia’s full list of Australian airport movements can be found on its website.

Who'd of thought? - A Commonwealth owned Secondary Airport that, through General Aviation industry flight training activity, is positively contributing to GDP...   
 
Next Kingston Council in the Airports thread: Ref -  GWEP MKII solutions for GA and secondary airports??

Now let's refer to Kingston Council contribution to the GWEP MKII: https://auntypru.com/wp-content/uploads/...ngston.pdf

Next from some answered and some unanswered Budget Estimates QON...

57. Minister-s meetings with general aviation business on Moorabbin Airport draft master plan .pdf

Senator Bridget McKenzie asked:
Senator McKENZIE: [...] Has she had a meeting with general aviation businesses in Moorabbin airport?

Ms Werner: Not that I am aware of. I'd have to check with her office.

Answer: The Hon Catherine King MP, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government met with members of the Moorabbin Airport Chamber of Commerce Inc at Moorabbin Airport.

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58. Departmental Official responsible for Moorabbin Airport .pdf

Senator Susan McDonald asked:

Senator McDONALD: Who was the responsible department official on Moorabbin? Is it you, Ms Werner?

Ms Werner: No, Senator. This was well before my time, I'm afraid. The responsible departmental official at the time—I'm sorry, I'd have to take that on notice.

Answer: The former Assistant Secretary of the Airports Branch.
Ref:  Dear Senator McKenzie a BRB 'HOW TO' on amending the Airport's Act!! 

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QON 59:

Senator McKENZIE: Was the department made aware of Kingston City Council sharing legal advice with the minister?
Ms Werner: Yes.
[...]
Senator McKENZIE: Did she seek a meeting? Has she had a meeting with the Kingston City Council?

Ms Werner: Not that I am aware of, but I'd have to check.

Senator McKENZIE: If you could check that would be fantastic

Download question

Answer Unanswered.

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QON 60:

Senator McKENZIE: Did Minister King meet with the Attorney-General, Mr Dreyfus?

Ms Werner: Not that I'm aware of.

Senator Chisholm: We're happy to take it on notice.

Senator McKENZIE: If you could take on notice the correspondence between the Attorney-General-not on the legality but as a local member and a member for Victoria, because my understanding is he has had meetings with this community.

Download question

Answer Unanswered.

Finally the quandary for our useless miniscule DK?? - From the Impact and mitigation of aircraft noise 20/09 Senate Inquiry public hearing in Hansard and pictures:  

Mr Cincotta : ...I can give one example. With the general aviation airports, as I said in the opening, at an airport such as at Moorabbin it is 500 to 1,000 flyovers a day. That is repetitive circuit flying in one path. If somebody lives in a flight path, where we have had monitors put in place at certain points of the year, the measures have been over 150 to 200 movements above 60 dBA, whereas the NASF guideline is 100. That's twice the level of threshold. On a 10-hour working day, that's the equivalent of one flyover above the threshold every three to four minutes.

When you break it down into plain English that the layperson can understand, you look at that and go, 'How can that be fair? How can that be reasonable?' There's no recourse for people who complain, who are affected in by this in their daily lives, to influence and impact any change. Complaining through the Airservices noise complaints system doesn't achieve that. All they do is respond to the complaint. They don't address the root cause or put pressure back on the airport to change those movements so that the community isn't faced with those exceeding thresholds...

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Senator STERLE: Mr Cincotta, I want to go to your second recommendation, and you have touched on this: 'reducing flight operation times, particularly on weekends and evenings when most people are predominantly home and carrying out outdoor activities'. As someone who lives under a flight path—mine's GA and helicopters, from Jandakot—I couldn't imagine 500 to 1,000. I'll just lay that on the table, because we don't have that. What actually would appease the community? Is it to pack up Moorabbin so that it doesn't operate on weekends? Is it curfews? Or is it to move it out somewhere else? What's the actual request?

Mr Cincotta : One of our CAAA members was from Jandakot, and he's since moved. That tends to happen with people who join our community groups. When they get nowhere in terms of any action, they move. So, I understand and appreciate the flyovers at Jandakot. Going back to Moorabbin, yes, Moorabbin is, on movements, the busiest or second-busiest airport in Australia, behind Tullamarine, and it's well understood. It's a general aviation airport, like Jandakot, and those movements—500 to 1,000 a day—are real. Those numbers don't include the helicopter traffic that also operates at the airport.

So, what do we want? Ideally—and this is separate to the major airports—these general aviation airports that conduct flight training should be relocated to areas that aren't under residential development. When they were first built there wasn't that much residential development around the area. In Moorabbin it was a lot of largely green wedge. But that's not the case now. It's fully populated, fully residential. The recommendation to solve it is to relocate, understanding that that's difficult. Flight operators have invested money in the airport and so forth. So, notwithstanding moving something, if that's not possible—we want to be practical about this—there are other strategies and mitigation that can happen. And there's more flexibility at a general aviation airport compared with the major airports. But there can be flight sharing. There can be reduced time, where they can condense the training to during the day, when people are at work, and maybe have it more open and have less activity on weekends and evenings. So there's the possibility for increased strategies to have that flexibility if relocation is not an option.

Senator STERLE: Yes, that's still a very wide-open response. I appreciate that. But the community understands—and I did do some googling—this is the problem, when airports are built and then we have urbanisation around them. I know that happens all over Australia and we can't get away from that. But I'll narrow it down: would the community accept reduced hours as a fix?

Mr Cincotta : Yes. Absolutely.

Senator STERLE: I wasn't quite sure. You said you'd love to move it out, and I got that, but you did say you've got to work together. You did say that. And it's particularly the weekend—you said in your statement to us that it's at 10 o'clock at night that they're still flying. Is that training?

Mr Cincotta : Yes, that's training. The airport operates the day training, but then every evening there's night training. The hours, during daylight saving, go until 10 pm. For the rest of the year, it's until 9 pm. So, again, when the circuit is full—when there are seven aircraft in the circuit—it's basically a plane flying overhead every two to three minutes. For people not in affected areas, it sounds like that can't be right. But it is. It's a plane every two or three minutes. As one passes, there's a period of respite, and then you hear the next plane approaching. Then there's a crescendo when that plane passes, and then it just continues on. So it is one after the other, continuously, from 8.30 am each morning until 10 pm during daylight saving hours, every day, 365 days a year—only if not affected by weather movements, if there are particularly windy days.

Senator STERLE: Yes, you'd look forward to those windy days! Is that just recently, or has it been going on for decades?

Mr Cincotta : That has been in place—we do have a flight friendly, where on weekends they need to stop operating by 6 pm. That is on Saturdays and Sundays.

Senator STERLE: You have that now?

Mr Cincotta : Yes. That flight friendly has been in place a little while. It just goes to show that there can be flexibility to limit those movements or to reduce the times—

Senator STERLE: Sorry—that's training?

Mr Cincotta : That's training.

Senator STERLE: I wasn't aware. So they've come to that agreement just recently—that has been negotiated between the airport and the communities?

Mr Cincotta : Yes. The flight friendly was set up, actually, before I moved into the area, so it has been effective at least in the last 15 years. On that cap and even the night-time caps, the planes that fly in and out for commercial reasons can still do that at any time—it's 24 hours. But the complaints aren't to do with those airports and that aircraft; it's the flight training and repetitive nature of the circuit training, one after the other, seven to eight planes maxing out a circuit. It's that repetitive training that causes issues...

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Mr Cincotta : I can add to that in terms of my experience with the Moorabbin Airport CACG. I'm a member of that. We've got a really good relationship with the CACG and the members there and the airport, but the CACG itself is very much just an information-sharing exercise where the airport tells us and the other stakeholders there about what's happening in terms of development—aviation increasing. When noise is brought up as an issue in the community concerns, it gets shut down because effectively anything that will impact the operations of the airport are not listened to. Again, it gets back to there being no regulatory pressure or anything that warrants them taking any action. So it's very difficult, as a community representative, to actually achieve anything because they just don't want to talk about anything that relates to the noise complaints that are coming from the community. Airservices and CASA attend, but it's largely just to be present, to be able to tick the box that they've attended...

MTF...P2