Gold Coast Airport is an international Australian airport located at the southern end of the Gold Coast, 25km south of Surfers Paradise and approximately 100km south of Brisbane. The entrance to the airport is situated in the suburb of Bilinga near Coolangatta. The runway itself straddles the state border of Queensland and New South Wales. During summer these states are in two different time zones. The Gold Coast Airport operates on Queensland Time all year round .For the 2015–16 financial year, Gold Coast Airport exceeded 6 million passengers. It is the sixth-busiest airport in Australia, and the busiest outside a state capital, in terms of passengers, and eighth-busiest in aircraft movements. It is also the third-fastest-growing airport in the country.HistoryUntil 1999 the airport was known as Coolangatta Airport. This is an Aboriginal word meaning "Place of Good View". It originally consisted (1936) of three grass strips with the intention of only providing an emergency landing ground for airmail aircraft transiting between Brisbane and Sydney. Passenger flights took off for the first time in 1939 using the then grassy field of the current Coolangatta site. Regular services were started by Queensland Airlines and Butler Air Transport after the Second World War. Ansett started its own services in 1950 using DC-3s, while Trans Australia Airlines did the same in 1954 using DC-3s, too, as well as DC-4s and Convairs to link other Australian cities.
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