Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 15:21:07 +1100 (EST) From: "Stop Para" Subject: Parafield Airport noise & Committee consultation To: community.relations@airservicesaustralia.com CC: complaints@casa.gov.au Dear Sir/Madam, We have some queries to clarify our understanding how Residents are allowed to be exposed to horrendous hours of aircraft noise, due to foreign commercial flying schools operating over long established, once quiet residential areas, around the Federally owned Parafield Aerodrome. It appears to me that Airservices Australia is chartered to monitor the Airport environment around Federal airports. We see how this is done with the main airports, but not for the GA airports that are being turned into mass flying school facilities and air freight centres. What is in place to monitor the noise from the flying operations around Parafield Airport? How are the actual noise levels verified to the noise contours shown in the Parafield Master Airport Plans? If noise data is supplied by the Airport, what is in place to deal with obvious conflicting interests? Furthermore, we cannot see any resemblance of your flight path activity data, and the actual aircraft activity around Parafield. How do you verify the actual movements of training aircraft when the tower is unmanned? We heard sampling ‘radio traffic’ was used to provide movent estimates – does this method include the volume of flight training traffic? Would you please avail your statistics to us? If convenient, please supply data from year 2000 onwards. We realise that it may not be mandatory for light, privately owned aircraft to have flight path location systems fitted. If safety is of paramount priority, why is this so? Should the problem lie with civil liberties, then why is it not mandatory that the commercial flying schools turn their on their aircraft flight monitoring transponders? Most of the flying schools’ training aircraft have the transponders fitted, and for years now, they talk about using them, but we understand they still remain turned off. (Ref: PACC minutes 28Apr2005 para 8.1). How can do you model the aircraft noise without such essential data of actual volume, time and detail of aircraft movements over location? There seems an assumption about Airservices that light aircraft emit ~80-85dB of noise. We are unsure what that is referenced to, but seems a minimal figure possible under optimal coasting conditions. Consequentially the prevailing attitude is that they constitute not much of an environmental noise problem. Residents frequently measure 70-85dBA of persistent, low flying, accelerating, training aircraft noise inside their homes. This has been going on for years. There are clusters of homes that lie beneath multiple flight training paths that hardly get ‘respite’ form aircraft noise. Many of these homes are within circuit turning arcs and experience a much longer duration of the unwanted noise. This is well known amongst the Airport Management, the flying schools and your Representative at Parafield, but where are the mountain peaks, pounds and ridges on the noise contours in the documentation fed to Canberra, or the information availed our community, or city planners for ‘consultation’? Complaints registered with your ‘Public relations’ unit are downplayed as much as possible by the Airport Management and Chairman of the Parafield Airport Consultative Committee. Her comments are not objectively neutral and pro airport. Disgusting behaviour, none of the Committee live under the racket they condone, hiding behind lack of tangible evidence, while the truth is suppressed at any opportunity. A typical example is that should any official noise measurements be in progress, mass training operations cease – and then they compare the averaged ‘background’ noise with a loaded Ghan. No wonder that after more than a decade, the previous Residents’ Representative, (Rita Harrison), resigned from the Committee quoting she, ‘was not getting anywhere,’ - your rep in Adelaide also knows this. There is a lot of ‘Red Tape’ used to keep residents quiet, so the airport is predominately heard. We have little confidence with the current Committee process, people have already been damaged by the airport’s operations. One aspect of harm caused by noise cripples people from appropriate representation, and are vulnerable to demoralisation – another tactic abused by pro Airport Stakeholders used to control what may threaten their operations. Unsurprising to us, there were ‘no suitable applicants’ for Residents’ representation on the Airport’s Consultative Committee, but that does not give your Representative the mandate to downplay the severity of the noise imposed over peoples’ homes without evidence. Please make her aware people settled around Parafield several decades before mass foreign flying school operations were dreamt of, and to keep her opinions objective. Complaints are up, the flying schools are allowed to ruin our health and neighbourhood, while the objective truth about noise over homes remains kept out of approval processes. In our opinion the ANEC/F does not reflect the reality around Parafield, but if all the data comes from Airport Management, manipulated by its expert consultants’ modelling, it’s not surprising. Please feel free to comment, we are very interested and look forward to your response.