Canberra Airport and the local construction outfit Village Building Company publicly declared an end to 15 years of open warfare over Village's plans to build houses under the airport's flight path across the NSW border at Tralee.

The truce means Village will build its 1500 houses at Tralee while the Airport believes it has safeguarded 24-hour flight status from noise complaints by future residents of the development.

It has been a brutal, no-holds barred contest with billions of dollars at stake as two of the ACT's highest profile businessmen, the Airport's managing director Stephen Byron and Village's Bob Winnel looked determined to fight it out to the bitter end.

On the line was Mr Byron's dream, shared with his equally tenacious father Terry Snow, of Canberra as Sydney's second airport or at least its freight hub, a plan which could not take off without 24-hour-flight access.

On the other side, Mr Winnel's vision of thousands of homes rising from the windswept paddocks to the south-east of the capital – and billions of dollars' worth of real estate sales - always looked shaky if the houses were subject to deafening aircraft noise.

Ever since Mr Winnel announced plans in 1998, to build 7500 homes under the airport's flight paths, the two sides have done bitter battle in countless courts and tribunals, to say nothing of the mud-slinging through the media.

The political struggle has been waged from the humble surrounds of Queanbeyan City Council through NSW State Parliament, the ACT Legislative Assembly and to the loft heights of the federal Parliament.

There has been furious lobbying of politicians, accusations of dirty tricks, allegations of smear campaigns, claims of outright lies and pedaling of political influence through campaign donations.

Twice, defamation cases between the parties have gone to Supreme Court, the dispute has gone to the Federal Court and there is a matter pending in another jurisdiction that cannot be reported for legal reasons.

In recent years, the Airport has even bought a strategic foothold of land in the middle of Tralee and then acquired a stake in the Village Building Company itself in attempts to land a knock-out blow on its antagonist.

But in the settlement announced on Wednesday, the Airport has agreed surrender the land holding and shares and to stop fighting the decision of the NSW Government to allow Village to build 1500 houses on the site.

In return Village has agreed that homebuyers at Tralee will be warned about and advised of Canberra Airport's 24 hour aircraft noise and any houses built will be heavily insulated against the noise.

Village will also request that Queanbeyan Council include “Section 149 Planning Certificates” on property titles at Tralee with the following wording:

“This land is subjected to aircraft noise at any time by the 24 hour/7 day passenger, freight and defence aircraft flight operations arriving and departing Canberra Airport. The frequency of aircraft movements and the size of aircraft are forecast to increase indefinitely into the future. It is the responsibility of landowners to noise attenuate their property to ensure their amenity as Canberra Airport will remain curfew free.”

Despite the settlement, there is no love lost between the two former warring parties.

Both issued terse press releases on Wednesday confirming the dispute had been settled and briefly outlining the terms of the peace deal but declined to make any further public comment.