A skydiving company says it wants more flexibility to meet demand from visitors and is considering noise effects on its neighbours by seeking a variation of a resource consent condition.
Skydive Queenstown, trading as NZone The Ultimate Jump, has applied to Lakes Environmental for a variation to remove the daily restriction on the number of flights from the airstrip at Remarkables Station, on Kingston Rd, about 10km south of Queenstown Airport.
The operator was given the "arbitrary" limit of 35 flights per day in its approved consent in 1997, the application's environmental effects assessment said.
"This condition [coupled with a condition that no more than two aircraft be in use at any one time during the day] was for the purpose of controlling noise from aircraft take-offs and landings, although it is a crude tool for that purpose and does not account for the fact that with quieter aircraft in use, overall noise levels are reduced," the assessment said.
The operator was not seeking amendments to any other conditions.
NZone general manager Robynne Williams, of Queenstown, said on Monday the variation aimed to "modernise and improve" operational flexibility to meet visitor demand while observing noise limits.
"In essence, we are tidying up our operation to best accommodate our needs while respecting our neighbours and to bring it into line with modern standards of noise limitation.
"We can easily accommodate double our existing skydive numbers within the 35 flight structure simply by using bigger planes, which we can do within our existing infrastructure.
"We need more flexibility within that figure and feel that we need to move to noise-based assessment, as is now standard in other areas of New Zealand, rather than a pure numeric limitation.
"This will work better for us and offer improved noise-limit protection to our neighbours [as] currently we have no noise restrictions.
"Noise limitations are the modern method of controlling operations such as ours."
Mrs Williams said there would not be more noise than what could result from operations authorised under the existing consent.
The consent restricted only flight numbers and number of aircraft, but not flight tracks, or aircraft size or type.
