Australia: Melbourne Airport is to undertake safety-critical maintenance and replace around 2,500m of pavement on the existing north-south runway.
The runway is the longer of the airport’s two runways and supports the vast majority of long-haul international flights.
This maintenance work is set to start in early November and will mean temporary nighttime closures of the runway. The work will take place over an 11-month period.
Melbourne Airport Chief of Aviation, Jim Parashos, said:Like other airports around the world, we undertake this preventive maintenance work every decade or so to ensure the runway can continue to support heavy aircraft operations. From next month we will close the runway five nights a week for between 6.5 and 8 hours each night for around 11 months.
This means that aircraft taking off and landing during these night-time maintenance windows will use the existing east-west runway instead.
We have strategically scheduled some heavy aircraft types, such as A380s, to arrive and depart earlier or later than the night-time closures, due to operational limitations on the east-west runway. This will have the added benefit of minimising impact to nearby communities.
Mr Parashos went on to say that people living to the east and west of the airport would experience additional flight activity during the nighttime closures.
In February 2023, maintenance work will take place at the intersection of the two runways, which will result in the temporary shortening of the north-south runway at night.
This will cause a slight change in the way aircraft land and take off from the north-south runway and this too could add temporary additional noise for people living nearby.
