Air traffic noise complaint

A QUEENSTOWN resident says his home is buzzed by more than 70 light aircraft and helicopters every day.

Doug Bailey, of Closeburn, has recorded a partial log of air traffic on the northwestern arm of Lake Wakatipu, between Frankton and Glenorchy.

He presented the study, compiled from February 2224, to Queenstown Lakes district councillors yesterday.

On one day, February 23, he recorded 60 flights and estimates there were actually more than 70.

It excluded scheduled airline services.

‘‘If I can go beyond the statistics to draw an analogy, it would be as if I ripped the muffler off my car and every eight minutes of every day, for 10 hours a day, I drove past your house,’’ Mr Bailey said.

‘‘It’s wearing, it’s constant and quite frankly at a level where it is causing distress.

‘‘This is the experience of everyone up and down the lake.’’

Mr Bailey spoke in the public forum of the full council meeting.

He understood the noise of each flight exceeded 43 decibels as it passed his Closeburn home, off the Queenstown-Glenorchy road, he said.

He said there were very few restraints on commercial air traffic and asked councillors to see what powers they had to help strike a better balance.

‘‘It’s definitely out of balance. There’s an industrial level of activity going up and down the lake.’’

Queenstown

Airport

chief executive Colin Keel, at the full council meeting to present the airport’s statement of intent, said the airport was always keen to hear from the community about ‘‘what is working and what is not’’.

It was in regular dialogue with operators.

‘‘We’ve recently put monitoring equipment in [Mr Bailey’s] home to see what [the noise] is like,’’ Mr Keel said.

‘‘He is well outside the noise boundaries of the airport.’’

Some commercial operators were moving to larger Caravan aircraft, reducing the number of movements, Mr Keel said.

‘‘We really embrace that. They’re putting, quite frankly, their butts on the line, because those things, and the helicopters, aren’t cheap, but that really helps us when we look at that growth profile.’’