This was published 8 years ago
Gold Coast to know by Christmas whether planes will fly over suburbs
By Tony Moore
Up to 40,000 Gold Coast residents from Southport to Tugun will know well before Christmas whether they will have extra aircraft flying in over the homes.
Gold Coast Airport is lobbying to have an internationally-recognised new landing system put in place.
The future flight paths in to Gold Coast Airport will be decided before Christmas.
Gold Coast Airport and Airservices Australia propose installing an instrument landing system (ILS) at Gold Coast Airport to help flights arrive in bad weather.
The Gold Coast Airport is Australia's sixth-busiest airport, but the only major airport that receives international flights operating without an ILS.
The ILS allows a pilot to come lower to the ground before making a decision to divert the flight in bad weather or not.
At present 50 flights a year – or 10,000 passengers – are diverted from Gold Coast Airport at a cost of $50,000 per flight.
However the proposed instrument landing system requires a 10-kilometre straight approach path, meaning that aircraft approach the Gold Coast from the north – and flies over Gold Coast suburban homes - rather than approaching Tugun from over the ocean.
A Gold Coast Airport spokeswoman said the airport was collating information generated during the public consultation period and confirmed a submission would go to Infrastructure and Regional Development Minister Warren Truss by early September.
Mr Truss then has 50 business days to make a decision on the Gold Coast Airport's report meaning, a decision would be made in mid-to-late November 2015.
Gold Coast City Council, at its general meeting on June 26, voted to oppose the introduction of the ILS in the Council's submission to the inquiry.
The Council voted 12 to 1 against introducing an ILS running over a new northern flight path.
"Council deems the negative impacts of the proposed new flight path to far outweigh any minor improvement in the numbers of flight diversions due to weather, which are currently insignificant," the Council ruled.
Gold Coast Airport receives on average 55 flights per day, or 20,000 flights per year, with about 66 per cent of flights approaching from the north.
The council believes "emerging technology" – similar to a scheme now on trial at Sydney Airport – should instead be explored at the Gold Coast's airport.
Sydney Airport is trialling Honeywell's Smart Path ground-based augmentation technology, which lets the aircraft use global positioning systems to identify the centre line of the runway in bad weather.
However Mr Walker said Air Services Australia believed Sydney's GBAS technology posed few advantages over the ILS proposed for the Gold Coast.
He said pilots still had to bring their planes down to a similar height with the emerging GBAS system before diverting their flight as they did with the ILS.
During the public consultation period it was revealed that noise from aircraft would increase from 55 decibels to 74 decibels in the Mermaid Beach to Burleigh Heads area of the Gold Coast.
Gold Coast City Council is also concerned additional aircraft noise could lower property values and poses some restrictions on Council's "no building height limit" areas of the new City Plan 2015.
Councillors Tozer, Grew, Gilmore, Robbins, Bell, Owen-Jones, Betts, Gates, Taylor, Grummitt, McDonald and mayor Tom Tate voted against introducing the ILS.
Cr Dawn Crichlow voted against the council's motion to oppose the ILS, while councillors Bob La Castra and Cameron Caldwell were absent for the vote.