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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-02-06 Daily Xml
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AIRCRAFT NOISE

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide) (15:11): I rise to speak about the impact of aircraft noise on residents in the Mawson Lakes and Parafield Gardens areas. Parafield Airport has been in existence for many years. It is important economically to the state, and many people, including many residents of those areas, are happy for the airport not only to exist but to be exactly where it is.

There is no question of its relocation, and the majority of people who live in the area, and certainly in Mawson Lakes, moved in knowing it was there. However, I have deep sympathy for people who are disturbed by early morning, late evening and weekend training flight circuits. I also note with interest the comments by the Federal Aircraft Noise Ombudsman, who points out that people can move into an area near planes without fully appreciating the possible impact of the noise. He writes in his report, 'The truth about aircraft noise', in January this year:

It is easy to criticise those people who buy or rent close to an airport for not realising what they're letting themselves in for—buyer beware. On the other hand, it is easy to understand why people can feel misled. References to the air noise exposure forecast—

which is the measure of noise standards—

can make it seem as though the noise is acceptable, but the experience of noise is such a subjective and personal matter that there can be no standard of 'acceptable' that will meet every individual's notions of acceptable. The experience of my office bears this out.

Parafield Airport has a Fly Friendly program that is a voluntary agreement with the training schools to restrict the time of flights to more reasonable hours.

The conditions of the program are that circuit training will cease absolutely from 11pm on weekdays but will cease from 10pm subject to operational requirements. Quite what those operational requirements are is not defined in the Fly Friendly program. I understand and respect that one is probably the need for people learning to be pilots to practise night flying, and I will come back to that shortly.

The reason I am standing here today is that I have had a resident write to me in the last couple of weeks with a log of flights after 10pm they experienced recently. On 21 December, there were 26 flights directly overhead after 10pm; on 26 December, there were 28; and on 8 January, 48 flights directly overhead after 10pm, some after 11pm. I am not sure that any of us would find that acceptable or reasonable.

It seems likely that the reason for so many flights late at night at this time of year is that the program to run night flight training is not modified to reflect the length of days; that is, nightfall is late in the daylight saving months, and that means a later start to flights. It seems to be most reasonable that the Fly Friendly program be altered during the summer months to restrict night training in those months, and I will be raising this with the airport on behalf of my constituents.

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