Flight paths of each runway option

This post is simply an information dump from the EIS documents; which doesn't seem to be anywhere obvious on the web other than in PDF form on the Blacktown Council website. In quite a number of articles, forums and other websites information about the airport has been presented in a way that in my opinion is potentially misleading to the community. As an example a Daily Telegraph article titled “Badgerys Creek Flight Path will slience the critics” shows the ANEF maps of the airport rather than any proposed flight paths. People really want to know whether the planes will "fly over them"; this post attempts to show more information to address exactly that.

At present as shown in the 1997 EIS for the airport there are three options that are proposed for the runway alignment of the airport; with the first two options quite similar.

• Option A has the runways going NE/SW
• Option B is the same but with a longer northern runway
• Option C is a direct N/S runway configuration
  

Whatever option is decided of course will influence the final flight paths of the airport. Most newspaper articles assume that Option A will be selected from what I have seen. Indeed if we assume that the fact sheets published along with the airport announcement are true from the Government we can probably say that Option A is the only option available. This is because out of the options proposed this is the only one that does not require more acquisition of land.

"The site owned by the Australia Government is sufficient to support an initial airport development and further land acquisition is unlikely to be required. Any future decision to expand would require consultation between the Government, the airport owner and affected stakeholders."
Fact Sheet - Building an airport at Badgerys Creek

Of course we can note that before the election Warren Truss confirmed the airport was not on their radar either (http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/just-dont-mention-a-second-airport-20130803-2r669.html). So I'm not sure whether we can trust the press release above. Furthermore the above words in the fact sheet seem like minister speak; the option is still open and no decisions have yet been made here. More interesting to note that when I attended the UWS airport forum a UWS staffer commented that Option C was more likely on the table since it would be funded by private enterprise and that they would prefer this configuration to line up with their other airport (i.e Kingsford Smith). While I don't have any information yet to suggest this is the case it does show there is no consensus of any part of the airport proposal yet including which runway alignment will be used.

The funny thing about all of this is that no matter which option is selected it really doesn't change much in terms of which areas will cop the most frequency of flights. Besides the obvious immediate areas near the airport Penrith and to a lesser extent Camden and Blacktown are situated within proposed flight paths. Below I've attached images of the flight paths as proposed by the 1997 EIS for both Option A and C to illustrate this. This of course debunks the myth that planes will simply continue flying north east and south west of the airport. It is interesting that at least for Option A that the flight paths turn back to fly over Sydney - in particular the Penrith area - when there doesn't seem to be any obvious reason why they need to do so.

Option A: South-West Takeoff flight paths (Source: Draft EIS (1997) Second Sydney Airport VOLUME 1 Chpt 9)

Option A: North-East Takeoff flight paths (Source: Draft EIS (1997) Second Sydney Airport VOLUME 1 Chpt 9)

Option C: Northern Takeoff flight paths (Source: Draft EIS (1997) Second Sydney Airport VOLUME 1 Chpt 9)

So why are we interested in what the flight paths will be? For two reasons:

1. It allows us to determine where the community impacts will be felt including but not limited to aircraft noise and;
2. It also gives some possible explanation as to why local stakeholders either support or oppose the airport development. It is interesting to note that out of the surrounding councils Liverpool (and therefore unfortunately WSROC) are the main vocal supporters of the airport while Blacktown, Camden, Fairfield and potentially Penrith are opposed to it. This of course correlates to the flight paths above with the Liverpool area pretty much clear from most of it.

Both reasons above of course whole topics in themselves and if I have time will deal with in further blog posts. I thank Blacktown Council for hosting the EIS documents of the Badgerys Creek airport proposal on their website (see http://www.blacktown.nsw.gov.au/Planning_and_Development/Strategic_Planning/Sydneys_Second_Airport_Draft_EIS_from_1997). It is interesting to note that a standard Google search does not show any proposals for flight paths at all at time of writing this post; hopefully posting them here makes it more accessible to people.