The website Aviation Business Asia Pacific is reporting Brisbane Airport will have a slot system in place by the end of 2012 to cope with capacity constraints from air traffic at peak periods.
The airport is also facing a possible curfew, with a government review of night time operations also happening before the end of the year.
Airport CEO Julieanne Alroe has conceded at the Aviation Summit in Sydney this week that peak hour demand is now just too great for single runway operations.
“As a result we are currently designing a runway management demand system – slots in the common parlance – that we expect will result in significant operational reliability outcomes for the airport and reduce some operating costs for the airlines,” she said.
Currently there are between 600 and 650 movements each weekday at Brisbane Airport and about 200,000 movements per annum.
By 2020 Brisbane is expected to have 270,000 aircraft movements.
Capacity is also being addressed of course by the construction of a parallel runway, but that will not be operational until 2020.
Alroe was also keen to talk about the upcoming review of the airport’s 24-hour operational status, a legacy of the ’09 White paper on Aviation.
“The review will be run by the Commonwealth and we await details of its structure with great interest, as we believe it will help us make the case much more plainly that a curfew on Brisbane Airport is not the most effective noise mitigation tool,” Alroe said Tuesday.
“It is a common misconception that a curfew will be a quick fix to solve aircraft noise problems, but unfortunately aircraft noise complaints are most often made about the frequency of morning flights and evening flights around dinner time; and night time curfew would not fix these problems."
“If anything, flights that would otherwise occur later in the evening would be pushed into these peak periods, increasing the frequency of flights at these times and creating more of an issue, not addressing it.''
http://www.aviationbusiness.com.au/news/brisbane-airport-introducing-slot-management-while-curfew-looms for copy of the item.