Flight paths into SYD airport- technical question

[Berlin]

Hello everyone,

this is only my second post and please excuse me if it is too much of a technical nature but reading some of the posts here I am sure there will be some smart brains knowing more on this one...

I know that Sydney airport uses a variety of landing patterns to try and spread airplane noise issues over several areas of the city (though for some reason I cannot help but thinking that the Western sububrs still get hit the hardest). I also know that this has always been quite an issue and that certain politicians have their seats in affected areas hence frantically defending the coughpy no night flights policy at SYD ariport.

What I do NOT know, and it has bugged me for years, why does Sydney airport have any of these problems to begin with as two of their three runways lead right out into the ocean? I've even worked in the industry before and no one could really give me a good explanation on this- couldn't you simply use the one of the bigger runways to have planes land and the other one to take off or at least do so with the bulk of flights? More even- could you not at least use this system for the night time hours when realistically it would probably be only a few flights an hour that really NEED to land in these time slots?

Maybe this is a stupid questions but it keeps bugging me each time I arrive on one of those horrid early morning arrival flights from overseas or, worse even, when you arrive from a long flight and have to do stupid circles around Sydney first to then land in over Marrickville and the likes. Any ideas? Thank you!

 

[StevePER]

You always want to land and take off into the wind, so either take-offs or landings are always going to be to the north.

 

[markis10]

The airspace around Sydney is generally divided into two halves, with traffic south and west in one half and north/east (with some exceptions) on the other, so that two runways can be used. One Runway cannot really be used for take offs and one for landings as you would have aircraft having to cross that runway to either get to the right runway or get to the terminal, so take offs and landings occur on both as its more efficient.

If you look at the predominant wind in Sydney is a southerly, so the inner west gets hit with the arrivals and Cronulla/Coogee with the departures most of the time, dont forget for a while the east west runway was closed! Hope that answers the question from someone who has worked Sydney approach and in Sydney tower.

 

[Berlin]

The airspace around Sydney is generally divided into two halves, with traffic south and west in one half and north/east (with some exceptions) on the other, so that two runways can be used. One Runway cannot really be used for take offs and one for landings as you would have aircraft having to cross that runway to either get to the right runway or get to the terminal, so take offs and landings occur on both as its more efficient.

If you look at the predominant wind in Sydney is a southerly, so the inner west gets hit with the arrivals and Cronulla/Coogee with the departures most of the time, dont forget for a while the east west runway was closed! Hope that answers the question from someone who has worked Sydney approach and in Sydney tower.

Thanks a lot for this- exactly the kind of explanation I was looking for! I knew there would be someone here with that kind of knowledge

 

[FuzzyAUS]

Cool..

Good to know how its broken up

 

[Andyzx]

Try this link to the no no no crowd map of noise
Australian Noise Exposure Forecast for 2029