Sydney Airport Runway End Safety Area (RESA) Operational Impacts

Challenge

In order to comply with (international) ICAO requirements related to airport operations, Sydney Airport extended the end-of-runway apron on its east–west runway 07/25 at the western end.

SLR was engaged to examine the operational impacts of the resulting closure of the runway and associated transfer of flights to the airport’s other main north-south runways. Our engagement also included assessing the construction noise and vibration impacts of the project at the nearest sensitive receivers.

Solution

Our team examined the impacts of the RESA project which required the shutdown of operations on runway 07/25: operational impacts from the re-allocation of flights and construction noise and vibration impacts from the RESA apron works themselves.

SLR made use of INM (source: US FAA) and TNIP Expert and Runway Allocator software programs to develop noise contours for a full year’s operation simulation. Our team compared the most recent data for calendar year 2006 with the likely re-allocated flight path strategy.

The simulation comparison was broken down into seasonal patterns as well as the overall annual predictions - this enabled our team to examine impacts influenced by Sydney’s highly directional prevailing wind climate.

The output for both the baseline and re-allocated scenarios included:

• ANEF/ANEC contours
• N70 contours
• LAmax contours
• Tabulations of respite periods.