Gold Coast - excelling as a purpose-built LCC airport

Following the opening of Gold Coast’s new passenger terminal, the result of seven years of planning and investments totaling $100 million, the airport has enjoyed consistent monthly growth in passenger movements.

In July Gold Coast registered its all-time monthly passenger throughput record (479,510), an increase of 16.5 per cent over the July 2009 figures. July 2010 was also the first month since October 2007 where Gold Coast’s domestic growth outshone its international growth.

Gold Coast’s terminal redevelopment project was a major part of the business strategy put in place in recent years to target low cost carriers. The redevelopment has more than doubled the size of the existing terminal building to 31,621 square metres to cater for forecast passenger growth over the next decade.

Gold Coast Airport CEO Paul Donovan said the terminal redevelopment was aimed squarely at enhancing the airport’s appeal to the LCC market – both airlines and passengers.

“The advent and success of LCCs has changed the way airports do business,” Donovan says. “We have spent quite some time developing a business strategy around targeting low cost carriers and then working with them to establish direct services. We purpose built our low cost carrier passenger terminal to meet the needs of our airline partners and worked extensively with them during the design and development phase to make sure what we built would get it right.

“Our focus is to ensure the terminal is fast and efficient for airlines and their passengers by taking a common user approach with one main check-in area for all airlines with self-service kiosks, a single baggage collection and screening point, and one main departures and arrivals area.”

Donovan says one of the unique features of the redeveloped terminal is a swing gate between the domestic and international lounges, which allows the domestic lounge to be extended during peak periods when the international area is not in use. Some of the other features on the new terminal include:

• 36 common use domestic and international check-in counters plus self service kiosks.

• Common User Terminal Equipment (CUTE) provided by SITA.

• Automatic baggage handling system (44 bags per minute capacity).

• Expanded inspection facilities for international arrivals.

• Five domestic and three international departure gates.

• The first Jetstar lounge in Australia.

Gold Coast also conducted four years of market research to inform the make-up of the retail and food and beverage outlets in the new terminal, which includes both branded ‘grab-n-go’ style outlets as well as more sophisticated coffee bars.

“A low cost carrier airline doesn’t translate to a low cost passenger,” Donovan explains. “Our research showed that people wanted brands they could recognise, which is very important at an airport because they don’t have a lot of time.”

What LCCs want from airports

Gold Coast’s airline customers, all but two of which are LCCs, seem to approve of the airport’s new passenger terminal and broader LCC strategy. Jetstar plans to add an additional 35 services per week into the Gold Coast by year’s end, with increased services from Sydney, Melbourne and Newcastle. And Tiger Airways has announced it will commence flights into Gold Coast from Avalon Airport in November.

Acknowledging Gold Coast’s “very significant capital works program” on its new terminal, and the degree to which the airport has transformed over the last decade to accommodate LCCs, Jetstar’s Executive Manager Operations Mark Dal Pra believes it’s vital that airports have a strong LCC strategy.

“I would say it’s absolutely critical, especially for an airport that has any degree of leisure-type traffic,” Dal Pra says. “It's clear around the world and our region to see how the growth in low cost carriers has changed the market.

“I think a lot of airports certainly recognise the benefits [of LCC growth to the airport]. We’ve got airports that are very on board with the model and with working with us to get the maximum potential benefit for all involved. We’ve got other airports that are less supportive, and that could be anything from not getting the right pricing deal in place, to not getting the right infrastructure, to not collaborating with some new technology.” 

In terms of attracting LCCs and cultivating mutually beneficial relationships, Dal Pra believes it’s important for airports to focus their forward planning on improving overall productivity and efficiency, and this includes efficient capital investment. Commercially, airports should focus on the opportunity to incentivise growth through long term pricing deals that encourage LCCs to reduce fares, increase passenger demand, increase services and grow airport throughput to build retail and car parking revenues.

“When you’re designing, things don’t need to be gold-plated,” Dal Pra explains. “Have a look at what the passengers need, as opposed to over-spending on fixtures and facilities in the airport precinct. It is also important to keep flexibility for growth –modularised growth – so you can come back and add on extra capacity as required.”

And Dal Pra stresses that it’s important that airports recognise that the needs of LCCs and the needs of full service airlines aren’t necessarily one and the same. While a full service airline may be satisfied with a 50-minute turnaround of aircraft on domestic flights, Dal Pra says Jetstar would typically be looking at a 30-minute turnaround or better. 

“And that’s about having the infrastructure so we can do front and rear stairs boarding, making sure we have a gate set up for very rapid boarding, and making sure we have a really good security set up so we can get people through to the lounge early,” he explains. “We want to make sure that we can create a very quick, efficient turnaround process at an airport.”

By all accounts, Gold Coast Airport aims to achieve this.

“We are committed to ensuring short turnaround times for our airline partners, while at the same time ensuring a terminal that is modern, easy to navigate, and hassle-free for our passengers,” Donovan says. “We liaised extensively with our airline partners to ensure our purpose-built terminal and common-user area met their requirements.”