Gold Coast Airport

The Slow But Consistent Growth of  Gold Coast Airport   

Gold Coast Airport is also known as the Coolangatta Airport is both an international and domestic airport in Bilinga suburb in Gold Coast, around 100 kilometers south portion of Brisbane. One peculiar thing to note about the Gold Coast Airport is that its runway straddles five suburban areas of the twin cities across the borders of New South Wales and Queensland. Note that even these two states do not have the same time zones during summer.  

All-time High Passenger Handling Record  

This airport is slowly but surely reaching significance as one of the aviation facility in the country. In fact it is recognized today to be among the fastest growing aviation facility or airport in Australia. To prove it, in the year 2006 to 2007 it had serviced over 3.7 million people from all over the world as well as locally and not only that, it had registered 352,554 passengers passing through Gold Coast Airport during the month of January 2007 alone. This was a record set by Gold Coast Airport alone.  

A bit of Gold Coast Airport History 

Originally, Gold Coast Airport was created in 1936 just to provide a venue for emergency landing to airmail aircrafts going to either Brisbane or Sydney. That is why its runways were only grass strips. It was only in 1939 that the first passenger flight took off from this international airport but still on the grassy runway. It was not only in 1958 that pavement and nice runways were built in this airport. On the other hand, its name was then Coolangatta Airport and was renamed to Gold Coast Airport only in 1999. 

Pioneering Airline Operators 

Queensland Airlines, Trans Australia Airlines, Butler Air Transport and the Ansett were the pioneering airline operators to introduce flights to and from Gold Coast Airport. After the runways were paved, it tool Gold Coast Airport a decade to update its facilities to finally allow operations of jet aircrafts at the same time extending the runway size to accommodate huge jets. All these offered domestic flights only. 

Change in Management, Change in Name 

Initially, Gold Coast Airport was owned by the government but beginning January of 1988 ownership of this aviation facility was taken over by the Federal Airports Corporation. Indeed, this transfer of ownership made the Gold Coast Airport a privately-owned entity but full privatization happened within ten years after the transfer. It took the name Queensland Airport Limited but in 1999 it was renamed to Gold Coast Airport Pty Ltd. But even with the change in name, the airport still has the IATA Airport Code of OOL. 

The year 1990 was a milestone for Gold Coast Airport as it made its first international flight via Air New Zealand flying regularly to Hamiltin, New Zealand. Just recently, in 2007 it welcomed AirAsia X serving direct flights to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Slowly but surely, Gold Coast continues to expand its services, flights and welcomes new airlines willing to operate on it. It was noted that a plan to construct a railways station at this airport will be realized in time of the Gold Coast Line extension will be carried out.