Dear Mrs Irwin

Thank you for your letter dated 19 November 2009 enclosing the petition about flight path activity at Sydney Airport presented to the House of Representatives by the Member for Cook on 19 June 2009.

I note that the four points the petitioners wish to bring to the attention of the House relate to the issue of the implementation and use of certain Standard Terminal Arrival Routes (STARs) at Sydney Airport. This issue was discussed at length at both the meeting of the Implementation and Monitoring Committee (IMC), which oversees the Sydney Airport Long Term Operating Plan (LTOP), on Tuesday 22 September, and at the meeting of the Sydney Airport Community Forum (SACF) on Friday 25 September.

My replies to the three specific requests of the petition are as follows:

1.

The Government fully supports noise sharing under the Sydney Airport LTOP. SACF and the LTOP IMC have been established as standing community consultative committees to oversee the implementation of the noise sharing principles.

2.

Airservices Australia has undertaken to examine the reasons underlying the changes in patterns of aircraft overflight of the Cook electorate and to report back to me through the IMC and to SACF members.

3.

I have asked my Department and Airservices to develop a paper scoping research into using new technologies to manage aircraft noise in ways that facilitate noise sharing while taking advantage of the gains in safety and efficiency that can be provided by advances in avionics.

Thank you for raising this matter.

from the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Mr Albanese