Learn about our investigation into Runway 34 arrivals over Newport into Melbourne Airport

A community proposal was presented to move the arrival flight path for Melbourne Airport Runway 34 (arrivals to the southern end of the north-south runway). Currently arrivals from the western side of the airport fly over the Newport and South Kingsville areas in making a left turn to join the final runway aligned straight-in approach to the runway. The suggestion was to move the left turn earlier so aircraft would fly over industrial areas of Altona North / the M1 before joining the runway aligned segment. This would result in a noise improvement for the Newport and South Kingsville areas.

Upon investigation, the proposal could not be implemented due to the location of Newport and South Kingsville being in alignment with Runway 34. Under precision landing approaches for Melbourne Airport, all aircraft arriving via Runway 34 must track via a waypoint called AKDEL.  A waypoint is a geographical location used to define a point on flight path and is defined by geographic coordinates. Unfortunately Newport/ South Kingsville is located under AKDEL.

AKDEL is in a very specific location based on runway alignment requirements and distance from the runway, in accordance with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) procedures in flight path design that guide the distances of procedures, specified altitudes and turn angles. The tighter turn suggested cannot be achieved as turns of arrival flight paths are designed to ensure adequate distances for aircraft to be at precise minimum safe altitudes before commencing their descent into the airport following a 3 degree glide slope.

A further suggestion was made to design a second (alternate) flight path for non-heavy aircraft to take the shorter turn, allowing noise to be shared. In assessing flight path changes Airservices considers the efficient operations of the airport and also whether there would be an overall noise improvement for the community. This shorter arrival path from the west would expose suburbs including Sunshine, Saint Albans, Deer Park and Burnside to increased levels of aircraft noise. Airservices does not generally consider that moving noise from one part of the community to another is a noise improvement. Due to reasons outlined above, the proposal was deemed not feasible to proceed.