Going for Gold

International flights from South- East Asia typically overfly Brisbane before turning over picturesque North Stradbroke Island and closing in on the mainland coast around Southport; services from Japan generally make landfall over Fraser Island before taking a wider ocean course before crossing again at Burleigh.

Whatever the point of entry to the Runway 14 final, the multistorey Gold Coast monoliths – many architecturally stunning, some that have seen better days, even more underway – provide a striking backdrop to Queensland’s premier holiday playground, notwithstanding the first-time arrival in a window seat who might view them as uncomfortably close.

The ride will never match the drama of the once arm-rest gripping roller coaster between the skyscrapers at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak, but when conditions are right a cheeky updraft from Tugun Hill, a few hundred metres from the runway threshold, adds to the frisson of flying by all that concrete and glass, sea and sand.

If first impressions count for anything, arrival into Gold Coast airport when the sun is shining and the surf is up genuinely takes some Beating.

‘Arriving when the sun is shining and the surf is up takes some beating.’

Airport operators Queensland Airports Limited (QAL) hope this and a whole lot more logistical planning will win them a gold medal, or at least a gold star, when waves of a different kind hit the coast next April for the XXI Commonwealth Games (GC2018) and associated arts and cultural Festival.

The statistics alone paint a picture of what’s ahead: the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games Corporation (GOLDOC) will welcome more than 670,000 visitors as well as 6,000 athletes and team officials from 70 countries to Queensland venues including Brisbane, Townsville and Cairns. The vast majority will call the Gold Coast home for what the city describes as “the biggest sporting spectacular the Coast has ever seen”.

The City of the Gold Coast Council says it is “one of the largest elite multisport events in the world, equivalent to staging 15 world championships simultaneously” and “the biggest international sporting event staged in Australia for a decade”.

The sports and entertainment schedule between April 4 and April 15 will attract more than 1.5 million spectators while broadcast rights will take the Games and the Coast to a television audience of 1.5 billion. A huge temporary workforce includes 15,000 volunteers and 3,500 accredited media representatives, while a more established longer-term workforce has been beavering away for several years on associated games Infrastructure.

Overall the Games are expected to pump around $2 billion into the Queensland economy.

If the projected incoming head count isn’t enough of a challenge for what is already one of the fastest growing airports in Australia, and the busiest outside a capital city, then factor in the overlapping Easter school holidays, the world renowned Byron Bluesfest and the Quicksilver Pro surfing event.

To some it may seem the recipe for the perfect traffic storm. To major event planners it is a wonderful Challenge.

It’s a confluence that has been top of mind for the Gold Coast Airport team since the city was announced as the Games bid winner in November 2011. With work on airport infrastructure already underway to meet ongoing growth projections, subsequent Games-specific planning in conjunction with GOLDOC, and state and local governments, has delivered a raft of innovative improvements, airside and landside, to cope with the rush.

As an added bonus, the airport has something of a secret weapon in its chief operating officer, Marion Charlton, whose career saw her move from Dublin to Sydney in 1990 and on to the Gold Coast in 2001. In Sydney, after involvement in operations linked to the Kingsford Smith parallel runway development, the winning of the 2000 Olympics bid in 1993 led her to a role observing on-site logistics at Atlanta Airport during that city’s staging of the 1996 Games. That experience proved invaluable in Sydney Airport planning for handling its own Games traffic in 2000.

A family decision to move north in 2001 coincided with a period of great turmoil and subsequent springboard for growth at the Gold Coast Airport, sparked by the Ansett collapse and the arrival of low-cost carrier Virgin Blue and its highly competitive fares model. Any thoughts of taking time out as a new resident on the Coast evaporated when Charlton took up the challenge of joining QAL.

Charlton, who was also present at the 2014 Games in Glasgow, has been applying her Games knowledge to key management and wider airport team planning since the GC2018 bid win. That includes everything from numbers of scheduled and potential arrivals and departures, to baggage handling (loading, offloading, collection and drop), security arrangements, domestic and international check-in, gate facilities, airside passenger movement, and links to landside transport.

Of key importance is engagement with members of the Games Family (athletes, coaches, officials and so on) as well as business-as-usual passengers, spectators, non-Games holidaymakers and business travellers when they set foot off the tarmac and into the terminal.

Charlton is well aware of the importance of those first impressions.

“We want to make sure we provide a warm welcome and efficient goodbye not only to Games Family, but everyone who passes through the terminal during that time,” she said.

“We want to offer people an end to end experience; for them to know they have landed at the home of the Commonwealth Games.”

‘To some it may seem the recipe for the perfect traffic storm.’

Charlton said that, for example, a large space is being converted into a representation of the Gold Coast, complete with a boardwalk, beach scenes, and wildlife encounters, backed by an accompanying terminal‑wide program of entertainment including music, stilt walkers and pop-up theatrical performances on peak arrival and departure days.

Additional staffing comes from a combination of increased numbers of volunteer airport ambassadors and a program utilising cross-skilling and other training to expose what Charlton describes as “the current fantastic team” to wider key roles in and around the terminal at Games time.

Games Family will have a dedicated lounge space which will give them a private area to relax before and after their flights and to help ease congestion for business-as-usual traffic.

Passenger movements are expected to be comparable to peak periods such as Christmas and New Year (figures show the airport handled a record 24,076 passengers on Saturday, December 23 last year) with the most dramatic spike forecast for April 16, the day after the closing Ceremony.

In the past 12 months, in conjunction with airline partners, the airport has rolled out self check-in and bag drop facilities, resulting in queuing and congestion dropping from up to 45 minutes down to a couple of minutes on average. However, April 16 will present unique challenges.

“We are expecting around 2,000 athletes to depart with around 10,000 pieces of baggage on that day alone,” Charlton said.

Some of those pieces will test baggage handling: think vaulting poles, javelins, massage tables, and para-Games event wheelchairs among a plethora of competition-associated equipment. To further assist a smooth Gold Coast exit and ease congestion, Games Family will be checked in at the Athlete’s Village rather than the airport, and a dedicated security lane Applied.

Charlton said learnings from Sydney showed that it is essential to make any waiting inside the terminal on key capacity days as comfortable as possible for all travellers, hence a rolling program of entertainment.

At the time of writing, and with the best of airport planning firmly in place, there were still some unknowns, particularly around inbound traffic. “We are still working with GOLDOC on what that traffic looks like before we nail it down,” she said.

Most teams and officials are expected to utilise current domestic and international regular carrier Services.

“We are not expecting charters in the sense of full teams on different airlines but we are expecting VIPs to drop in on RPT-sized aircraft and other private jets. This will be a late call. The very nature of this VIP traffic means it is hard to predict because there is likely to be little notice of Arrival.”

Airside, a recent RPT apron expansion provides parking space for four aircraft additional to normal scheduled operations.

As well as new stadia and existing sporting stadium upgrades, key Gold Coast infrastructure improvements include the extension of the Gold Coast light rail network to link Broadbeach, 18 kilometres north of the airport, with the mainline rail terminal at Helensvale. Games planners hope direct rail access to and from Brisbane via this network will ease road traffic congestion on the M1 arterial.

While the extent of traffic snarls to and from the airport precinct remains an unknown, it and other hubs will be well served by public transport. Games ticket holders will travel free and all visitors are being urged to take advantage of enhanced public transport services.

We are expecting around 2,000 athletes to depart on that day alone.’ MARION CHARLTON

From Coolangatta to Gold

Gold Coast Airport has come a long way since its establishment in 1936 as an emergency landing ground for aircraft flying mail between Sydney and Brisbane. Three grass strips were prepared in what is now the suburb of Bilinga at a time when the Coast’s reputation as a holiday destination as much as a mineral sands resource began to take a firm hold (though it would be another 20 years before the then “South Coast” became known as the Gold Coast).

According to the airport history, the first regular passenger services started in 1939. By 1947 regular Queensland Airlines and Better Air Transport services were in place, followed in 1954 by TAA using DC-3s and later Skymasters and Convairs.

Construction of the northern part of the original terminal was completed in the early ’50s with annual passenger movements approaching 12,000. By 1958 the runway and taxiways were sealed along with the access road and carpark and a light aircraft apron was Provided.

Work on the existing terminal complex began in 1980 with annual passenger movements exceeding 650,000. Upgrading of the main runway for widebodied aircraft (767 and A300) operations came along in 1982 with the first international charter flights starting eight years later. Privatisation saw ownership of the airport shift from the Federal Airports Corporation to Queensland Airports Limited (QAL) in 1998.

For many years, it was known as Coolangatta Airport in recognition of the nearby burgeoning holiday destination and while the name changed in 1999 a significant remnant remains in its IATA designation OOL and ICOA tag YBCG.

Since the turn of the century, growth has been exponential, matching the needs of a growing Gold Coast permanent and transient holiday population as well as the city’s emergence as an economic, educational and development powerhouse. An original and continuing focus on the low-cost airline market has expanded with full-service international carriers now recognising Gold Coast potential.

A case in point is the relatively recent Gold Coast Hong-Kong route (outward bound via Cairns) operated by Hong Kong Airlines which further opens a wider Asian market serviced by Jetstar (Tokyo, Osaka), Scoot (Singapore) and AirAsia X (Kuala Lumpur). Apart from Australian domestic services operated by Qantas, Jetstar, Virgin, Tigerair and JetGo, there are Gold Coast connections to New Zealand via Jetstar, Virgin, Air New Zealand and AirAsia X.

Charlton said the most recent major redevelopment of the terminal was completed in 2010, a $100 million project that, at the time, was Australia’s first purpose-built low-cost carrier terminal. The airport now welcomes 6.5 million passengers a year with 420 flights a week off its 2,492 metre Runway 14-32 handling everything from private aircraft to 737s to A330-300 and 787-9 Dreamliner “heavies”.

While the overall story is overwhelmingly positive, significant community debate was stirred by an ongoing project to install an ILS, principally as a bad weather supplement to the current RNAV approach and to help prevent the need for weather diversions.

Despite government approval in 2016, it drew objections from some residents worried about potential for greater aircraft noise along an extended flightpath. The project became subject to ruling by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, preventing installation in time for the Games.

Charlton said the ILS is expected to be completed by the end of 2018 and fully operational by 2019. Noise Abatement Procedures (NAPs) have been developed to ensure the ILS will only be used when operationally Required.

Meanwhile, an existing curfew restricts airport operations between 11pm and 6am.

Gearing for growth

If lead role in the airport Games project wasn’t enough, Charlton also has a long term “day job”: oversight of the ongoing $340 million transformation of airport expansion known as Project LIFT.

“When the business of the Commonwealth Games is done, we will move into construction of our southern terminal,” she said. “This includes a new three-level terminal with aerobridges which will house the airport’s international operations. A range of other upgrades are also planned as part of the project including a consolidated ground transport facility.

“We are also working on a broader property strategy to activate commercial opportunities within the airport precinct. A key part of this is the delivery of a four-star Rydges hotel which we will break ground on this year. It will feature 192 rooms and facilities for business and leisure Guests.”

It is all about QAL and the airport catering for Gold Coast growth projections that demographer Bernard Salt says will see the city’s resident population double by 2050 to 1.5 million. Charlton says the airport masterplan reflects passenger growth from 6.5 million to 16.5 million by 2037.

When asked if keeping pace with the requirements of such a steep growth curve was a problem for management, Charlton was succinct.

“It’s a great problem to have,” she said.