Airservices Terms of Reference for Review published

On 31 January, Airservices quietly published the Terms of Reference for their review of the Hobart SIDs and STARs without informing complainants or the Aircraft Noise Ombudsman.

Apart from a long list of constraints, some of which are repeated twice, the only new information is about how residents will be consulted. The answer is: they won't be - until after the findings and recommendations are completed in August 2018 - 6 months away!

Here are the 'Key Dates':

Stage 1: Findings and recommendations no later than August 2018

Stage 2: Consultation and feedback no later than December 2018

Stage 3: Publication of final report no later than March 2019

This hardly meets their commitment to involve residents 'throughout the review'.

And this is exactly what happened last time - tokenistic 'consultation' about pre-determined outcomes.

You'd think they would have learned by now that residents are ignored at their peril.

We will push for potentially affected residents to be part of the review from the outset.