Residents in Melbourne's northern and western suburbs will be asked to share the pain of increased aircraft noise and manage the impact of Melbourne Airport's $3 billion new runway.
The airport will start public consultation on Tuesday on different operating modes for its three runways to gauge how communities want the different flight paths used and how best to ease the effects of noise pollution.
Federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King approved the contentious new runway in September last year, on the condition the airport develops a plan to distribute aircraft noise pollution more equally across the suburbs.
The 24-hour-a-day airport's operators want to have its new runway operating by 2031 and say it is needed to deal with growing passenger numbers, which it forecasts will double to 83 million a year by 2046.