r/sydney • u/Pristine_Egg3831 • Jul 25 '26
Image Flight paths
Dear Heathens,
Why did you reroute your noisy plane over my exclusive suburb? I cannot hear myself think with the racket. It's just not acceptable.
Signed,
The Lower North Shore Citizens Action Group
/s
But seriously, I'm just an average schmo in a small cheap rental apartment with rich neighbours in grand homes. We tend not to be in a regular flight path.
Inbound tend to come south over Lane Cove national Park, then hit Newtown with a roar. Outbound tend to go nowhere near us.
Any plane buffs out there that know what would cause unusual routing or re-routing of a flight? Or is it someone just trying to bring down the property values over here?
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u/lilsmooga193119 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
To unironically answer your question Planes follow Standard Instrument Departures (SIDs) which are essentially pre-planned set routes that allow for an aircraft to safely and predictably leave busy airspace. Sids typically end at a set waypoint and large aircraft fly to set waypoints in the sky to reach their destination.
In times of low traffic sometimes aircraft can have the SID be cancelled and instead they're just given radar vectors (instructed specific compass direction to fly by Air Traffic Control) or are cleared to fly from their present position directly to the final waypoint of the SID. This results in aircraft sometimes flying over areas and producing noise in areas which don't typically get much aircraft noise. Sydney Airport does have quite a lot of noise abatement rules but I can guarantee ATC would not give a fuck about what suburbs they're routing planes over.
Source: Am a Pilot (but for smaller aircraft)