Australia’s biggest pilots’ union has alleged that an arrangement by Brisbane airport for three major international airlines to change takeoff and landing procedures to reduce noise pollution is “potentially unsafe” and “highly unusual”.
The Australian Federation of Airline Pilots (AFAP) alleges that the airport’s move to encourage Singapore Airlines, Emirates and Cathay Pacific planes to consider taking off or landing with tailwinds of two knots above the limit imposed by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (Casa) “falls well outside international standards and conventions”.
Aircraft noise has become a hot button topic in Brisbane, with the federal Greens pushing for a curfew and flight cap.
Last week the Brisbane Airport Corporation CEO, Gert-Jan de Graaff, wrote to MPs seeking to “update you on the actions taken by BAC to help improve amenity for impacted residents”.
In the letter, seen by Guardian Australia, he detailed how the airline had approached three international airlines, who often fly in and out at night, “to explore ways to minimise noise”.
Casa’s maximum tailwind allowance prevents air traffic controllers from allocating runways to planes when there are tailwinds of more than five knots. Under the rules, however, pilots maintain discretion to operate with a higher tailwind.
Graaff’s letter said after discussions with the airport, the three airlines had asked crews to consider taking off and landing over the water and, if the pilot considers it safe, to request the change from air traffic control.
“This will mean there is a higher probability of achieving more departures and arrivals over the water, weather permitting,” Graaff wrote.
“These airlines believe they can modify their operations in certain circumstances that will enable fewer flights over the populated areas of the city without any reduction in safety.”
However the pilots union says it strongly opposes the arrangement.
“Brisbane Airport Corporation … do not have the authority to go outside Casa guidelines and to strike agreements with individual airlines that abrogate safety to commercial concerns,” an AFAP spokesperson said.
“Our pilots – who are the end users – consider this move to increase the tailwind limits from five to seven knots as potentially unsafe.”
While headwinds assist a plane in achieving takeoff and in braking upon touchdown, tailwinds make both harder and increase the length of runway required.
The airport says that it operated safely for 30 years with a maximum tailwind speed of 10 knots, until in 2016 Casa halved that to five knots to align with the international standard.
Casa knocked back a proposal by Airservices Australia, the commonwealth-owned organisation responsible for the management of the country’s skies, to re-establish the 10-knot tailwind allowance the following year.
De Graaff said Airservices was “currently considering another application to achieve a seven-knot tailwind allowance” in a new safety case to Casa.
In response to the concerns raised by pilots, the airport stressed there was no written agreement in place and said safety “has and always will be paramount”.
“Three of the world’s largest and safest airlines have agreed to give their pilots the discretion to accept up to a seven-knot tailwind,” the airport’s head of corporate affairs, Stephen Beckett, said. “But that decision rests with the pilot.”
This change in approach has been in effect for several weeks and Beckett said the airport was “currently working with a number of other airlines” on “a range of measures that are aimed at minimising the impact of aircraft noise on the community”.
A spokesperson for Casa said “rules for air traffic controllers nominating a runway for all arriving and departing flights have not changed and the tail wind limit is five knots in accordance with international requirements”.
“Safety rules allow a pilot-in-command to make an operational decision about the conditions that they can safely accommodate for their individual flight, in line with their approved company procedures and aircraft manufacturer guidelines,” the spokesperson said.
But if the measure was designed to win community support, it failed to appease the Brisbane Flight Path Community Alliance chair, Marcus Foth, who dismissed the arrangement as a “red herring”.
“First of all this is presented as a breakthrough, when we don’t believe it is a breakthrough whatsoever,” Foth said.
Foth, who is also a professor of Urban Informatics at the Queensland University of Technology, said he welcomed pilots being enabled to use their judgment to fly more frequently over the bay.
“But what is actually eating up any these marginal little fiddly things that they are trying to do at the fringes is the growth aspirations of the airport,” he said.
However Matt Shepherd, a To70 senior aviation consultant and former air traffic controller, said the changes could make a measurable impact on noise.
“If Brisbane airport have had a conversation with some of the major airlines that operate overnight that are creating this additional noise footprint, and those aircraft agree to operate using up to seven knots downwind and over the bay operations, then that is a big step forward in reducing the noise footprint over the city at night.”
Airservices Australia and the three airlines have been approached for comment.
