By Tate Papworth
Keilor residents claim Melbourne Airport’s decision to build a second north-south facing runway will “kill” the area.
The Airport’s decision, announced last Thursday, means that flights over suburbs including Keilor, St Albans and Bulla will more than double.
Keilor Residents and Ratepayers spokesperson Susan Jennison said: “It’s a death knell … it’s devastating.”
She said residents were concerned about the health and social impacts of another north-south runway and increased air traffic.
“The big thing with this is that a lot of people are still not sure how it is going to affect them,” she said. Residents will consider their next move over the coming weeks.
Airport chief executive Lyell Strambi said the additional runway is expected to open in 2025.
“After a period of extensive analysis and consultation with industry partners, we’ve decided that building our third runway in the north-south direction is the preferred option over an east-west direction,” he said.
“The main deciding factor is the availability of the runways in a north-south direction. They are just far more available for operations on more days of the year, particularly in those peak hours where capacity is really important to the airport.”
More than 300,000 residents living in impacted areas will receive information packs in the mail starting from next week.
“There’s no denying that a growing airport has an impact on the community. Some of those impacts are positive, some of those are negative and we have to work with the community to understand those and then find ways to deal with them,” Mr Strambi said.
“There’s a number of different ways you can operate a particular runway system to reduce the impact on your communities and that’s what we need to work through now – how best to run this airport and this new runway system which will create the best affect overall.”
The airport hopes to begin construction on the new runway from 2022 at a cost of $1.5 billion, significantly more than the originally planned $1.3 billion price tag for the east-west runway.
Mr Strambi said the main determining factor in the airport’s decision to scrap more than five years of planning on an east-west runway was availability, largely determined by the wind.
“It’s complex but it’s wind, it’s the gusts that you’re dealing with, it’s wind turbulence around buildings, it’s a whole series of factors including windsheer. It’s about better understanding of the wind conditions at the airport,” he said.
The plans will need to be approved by the federal government to progress.
