Gungahlin V's The Airport

There is no problem in Gungahlin. They usually take off to the north and gain altitude around Majura area. By the time they reach Gungahlin the noise is pretty minimal. I have a good view of this from my house.

It’s a situation that will only increase over time, with the airport looking to ramp up traffic several-fold. Hence GCC’s support for the concept of putting in a curfew now, rather than waiting until it is a serious issue. Fixing the goalposts now, if you like.

The standard operation for the airport is that they minimise noise complaints from the Jerra end by having departure to the north except in strong tailwind situations. Leaves Jerra with just the arrivals, which is a lot quieter than departures, but more sustained. If anyone is dumb enough to buy under the flight path in Tralee, they will be majorly disturbed by the arrivals.

At night, the airport changes to both arrivals and departures from/to the north. This puts the majority of the night noise over the Sutton area to the left and Defence to the right.

The recently approved master plan includes a new move by the Airport to do two things in response to GCC’s lobbying:

1/ Extend the Noise Abatement Area out to the NSW border to ensure that all flights attain an altitude of 7000 feet above sea level before crossing the NAA line. This means they can still cross over Gungahlin, but at altitude. Operationally, this doesn’t have a big impact on us, as the flights are usually out past the border before turning left anyway, but it does give us a degree of certainty into the future.

2/ Negotitate with airlines that the NAA “high jump bar” becomes a “wall” between 11pm and 6am. That is, all flights must go out and around the NAA irrespective of altitude. This will go some way towards reducing night/early morning noise, and is a win of some consequence for us in Gungahlin, but of little value in reducing airport noise impacts for Hackett/Watson residents. Hence our continuing support for a curfew.

Occasionally we do get low departures over us. Generally weather-related though – a week ago one turned very early and low and went straight over my place and Palmerston. Looking around it was clear it was avoiding a small storn cell directly north of the airport.

yes generally they take off over Hackett/gungahlin and come in over tuggers/jerra.

We don’t get low planes over our place at Palmerston. Lots of high up planes but none taking off or landing. We can see them as they gain altitude, but that’s closer to Mt Majura.

Been here for 17 years, for those of you who don’t realise that parts of Gungahlin are older than parts of Belconnen.

unless the wind bad, they don’t land from the north. too many mountains/hills in the way.

There are parts of Tuggeranong that have noise too – as well as campbell.

On cloudy days the planes deviate from their normal flightpaths a bit and are suddenly right overhead – but these bad weather flightpaths will just become additional regular flightpaths once the flights increase enough.

Search me why a curfew is good enough for Sydney, but not good enough for us.

Lived in Gungahlin for nearly 15 years and caught a gaziliion planes in/out of Canberra. The planes don’t fly low over Gungahlin.

On approach from Melbourne you more than likely came in over Jerrabomberra and Queanbeyan way. Every flight I’ve ever had from Melbourne comes in that way