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Via Oz Flying:

Sunshine Coast Noise Model overlooked GA: Review

17 February 2023



An Airservices Australia post-implementation report (PIR) into new flight paths at Sunshine Coast Airport released last week found that the noise modeling used presumed general aviation would remain on the old runway.

New flight paths were created when the expanded runway 13/31 opened in June 2020, and the noise modeling used in the 2018 Targeted Environmental Impact Assessment (TEIA) assumed some GA operations would remain on runway 18/36. However, that runway was decommissioned, transferring all GA movements onto the new runway.

The change is significant, given that GA accounts for nearly 80% of movements at Sunshine Coast.
The PIR also said an aircraft type new to the airport also changed noise levels in some locations.

"The PIR found that actual number of 70 decibel events was consistent with the TEIA across all modelled locations, but that the number of actual 60 decibel events was higher than modelled in Eumundi, Weyba Downs and Castaways Beach," the report states.

"The key reasons for this were found to be the introduction of a new aircraft type that was not flying in this airspace at the time of the modelling – the SF34, and that the modelling had assumed some General Aviation (GA) operations would continue to occur on the existing runway.

"This runway was decommissioned at the time of the opening of the new runway, with the GA traffic that was expected to use this runway shifted to the new runway."

The PIR recommended Airservices investigate a number of changes to the 13/31 arrivals and departures flightpaths, as well as considering an additional VOR/DME non-precision approach for training on the new runway. All changes arising from the recommendations will be put through Airservices' flight path change process.

Airservices has made the PIR available for public comment until Sunday 12 March.

MTF...P2