Brisbane airport noise complaints more than the rest of the nation’s airports combined

Brisbane Airport has had more noise complaints than the nine other major Australian airports combined – but all might not be as it seems.

Brisbane Airport has had more noise complaints against it than the nine other major Australian airports combined, as it deals with the fallout of the opening of the second runway.

But there are claims the federal election campaign – in which the Greens campaigned heavily on the airport noise issue and letterbox-dropped QR codes to make complaining easier – inflated the numbers.

New Greens Member for Griffith Max Chandler Mather dismissed the claims as “a joke”, warning fed-up residents were preparing to start peaceful protests next year if more action in not taken.

Greens Member for Griffith Mr Max Chandler-Mather. Picture: YouTube

Brisbane Airport Corporation spokesman Stephen Beckett said the airport wanted to get the number of complaints down, but warned a cap and curfew on flights would do little to stop complaints while driving prices higher and cut thousands of flights to regional Queensland.

The Airservices Australia annual report revealed there were 1309 individual residents who complained about noise from Brisbane airport in 2021-22.

It dwarfed the number of complaints the nine major airports across the country, including Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Cairns, Gold Coast and others, which registered just 1237 complainants combined.

The report found there was a “sudden spike” in complaints in the first half of this year, with more than 1000 complaints made between January and March and more than 1800 between April and June.

Airservices Australia said the spike was due to the increase in flights post-Covid-19 border restrictions, the implementation of noise improvement trials, the release of the interim Trax review into the runway, but also the federal election.

Mr Beckett said the airport welcomed genuine feedback from residents, but said complaints rose during the election as part of a “well-orchestrated activist campaign for political purposes”.

Brisbane Airport upon completion of its second runway in April 2020

He said in the past month one person was responsible for 290 of the 415 complaints received by the airport.

“Whenever there is significant change to flight paths there is an increase in noise complaints,” Mr Beckett said.

“Other airports’ numbers have remained steadier as they have not had major flight path change.

“Nonetheless, we want to see these numbers come down, and we are working with Airservices Australia, and airlines, to make improvements to reduce aircraft noise impacts on the community.”

Mr Chandler-Mather said the number of complaints made it clear that Airservices Australia and the government had not addressed the real issues of “unsustainable flight noise”, and he reiterated calls for a cap and curfew of flights.

“We’re asking for what Sydney has and you’ll note that Sydney has substantially less complaints,” he said.

“They opened a new runway that pushed a large number of flights over a dense area of Brisbane.

“It may have had an impact to the point that people hoped the government would do something.

“Even without a federal election, we would have seen a high number of complaints.”