Originally Posted by
drpixie
Remembering, of course, that despite having 2 runways, there is a movements/hour cap! Can't upset the locals, must keep the noise away from the PMs' electorate. And then on top of that, Sydney's special procedures - like all the STARs end in vectors!
Dr,
Nothing to do with the PMs electorate, these caps were legislated in about 1997, as an election promise.
However, politics does intrude, hands up those who remember Punchville and Breretown (Leon Punch and Laurie Brereton, LABOR MPs,) over whose electorates flights were avoided like the poison, unlike Liberal electorates NW of Sydney, where low, slow and noisy was ( and often still is) the order of the day, and complaints ignored.
Recently, again due to noise politics, the "80 per hour" is now longer an "average", but a maximum, making the problem even more inflexible.
You can justifiably blame Airservices for most of the infuriating Sydney "procedures", but not the movement cap.
Back in the day, we worked bleeding hard to have the "promise" treated as "aspirational", but a Minister could not be moved from his election commitment.
Later, we tried bleeding hard to have the Regionals exempted from the cap (they don't even register above the minimum threshold at the noise monitor points) but failed.
Given the runway configuration, and traffic mix, except in strong westerlies, YSSY can sustain about 135 movements per hour.
Tootle pip!!