Sunshine Coast Airport has underlined its status as Australia’s fastest growing airport by reaching the one million passenger mark in a 12-month period for the first time.
The airport, located about 100km north of Brisbane, announced that it had reached the milestone on Wednesday.
Figures from the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) showed there were 13 airports that handled more than one million international and domestic passengers in the 2015/16 financial year – Newcastle (Williamtown), Launceston, Darwin, Hobart, Canberra, Cairns, Gold Coast, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
Sunshine Coast was 14th in terms of passenger traffic in the 12 months to June 30 2016, with 958,119 travellers passing through its terminals on domestic and international flights.
The airport is on the lookout for more international flights after it was officially designated an Australian international airport in October.
Meanwhile, a proposed new runway and other planned works around the airport would also allow airlines to use widebodied aircraft to Sunshine Coast.
Sunshine Coast Airport celebrated the achievement with a video on its YouTube channel:
Sunshine Coast airport general manager Peter Pallot said reaching the one million passenger mark highlighted the recent growth in services at the airport.
“Each month, we continue to achieve new highs in passenger numbers, but to reach the million mark for the year is something extra special,” Pallot said in a statement.
In recent times, Qantas has resumed flights to Sunshine Coast, while Jetstar and Virgin Australia have added extra services.
Further, Air New Zealand has extended its seasonal service to Auckland.
“Reaching one million passengers for the year is the pinnacle of that sustained growth and investment by the airlines in our region,” Mayor Mark Jamieson said.
deano
says:Qantas will be operating from the sunny coast to Melbourne over the holiday break and this could end up being ongoing
Virgin have added no extra flights to Maroochydore and are losing ground to Jetstar, they need to get Tiger…
This is a majority tourist market, right up Tigers alley
Locals are crying out for flights to the north
Wellcamp seems to be able to sustain Townsville and Cairns from a 100,000 population base and with 300,000 on the sunny coast one would think that a direct service would be a winner
One would think that more international destinations would need to wait until an adequate runway was built
But well done on the 1 million,, tourism is important up here and what better place to have a holiday for a family…
Harrison Grohn
says:Congratulations!!!!
Marc
says:Clive Palmer must have flown 900,000 times himself.
random
says:@Deano
Think you’ll find Toowoomba Wellcamp population base is actually closer to 200,000 but I get your point.
Active, engaged, well connected airport management is everything – you only have to look at the failings of Townsville over the past 15 years since the last upgrade. Static growth despite wildly optimistic projections.
Harrison Grohn
says:We need tiger!! Do not get why they pulled out!