Gold Coast Airport

Upon arrival from Singapore I cannot believe that it took 50 minutes waiting in a hot crowded room to collect our luggage. With so many more international travellers using this airport this needs addressing. After an 8.5 hour flight it's extremely frustrating to have this delay. It's great to have more international flights in and out of the Gold Coast but this service needs to be addressed. Not a happy experience to return home to.

Mess of an airport. Check in queue for our Tiger flight opened late with all the passengers standing in one queue and when the girl finally turned up to check us in she brusquely told us we were all in the wrong line and had to move across. On a warm day the airport is poorly air conditioned and departing and arrival passengers all push together to get to and from gates. This airport has always been a shambles in all the times I have been there the one saving grace for me is to be able to sit at the big glass windows and watch planes arrive and depart. Needs a good overhaul.

No Qantas self service baggage drop and no Qantas service desk. Joy. And to top if off when one of the baggage carousels decided to stop working all of that flights bags were shoved onto our carousel causing a huge pile up and congestion.. My least favourite airport in Australia so far.

We arrived on an AirAsia flight at 0700 on 9th March. We got through immigration without too much of a delay then we waited and waited and waited for our luggage. What a joke. Having come from Thailand where it took only 15 minutes to get our bags to return home and wait almost an hour. There is just no excuse. Not a good first impression for overseas visitors. What is there excuse? They had better get their act together before the 2028 Commonwealth Games.

Check in area with Jetstar fine and efficient. Security check point fast. No space to sit in food court as people What a shambles! We arrived on time but were kept on board for 30 minutes because an international flight was boarding. Apparently they had no other way of segregating the two sets of passengers. This airport is just a big long glorified barn with no proper departure lounges no air-bridges.

Check in area with Jetstar fine and efficient. Security check point fast. No space to sit in food court as people used those seats waiting for their flights. Just a few more seats at both ends of the departure terminal. Domestic departure area clearly is way too small for the amount of flights. Lucky to be flying out of international section which had separate seating. Although I notice they have made this area smaller. Food options pretty poor.

This airport is an absolute disaster particularly in School Holidays! Who ever thought you could get away with no gate lounges and long lines of queuing passengers stretching through the terminal obviously never actually travels anywhere. You have to push through lines of boarding passengers just to take your poor quality and over priced food from the food outlet to the small number of tables. Only one set of toilets at far end of terminal. Only good feature is the excellent signage around the terminal and its public transport connections.

Clearly too many budget airlines use this terminal because landing fees are cheap and they have overloaded the facility. We were in queues continuously from 7.30-9.30 am starting with check-in and ending with a queue to enter the aircraft for Scoot flight TZ5 scheduled to leave at 9.30 am for Singapore.

Driving into and out of GC is the easy part the rest is more of an ordeal. Having flown both International and locally recently I find the queue bearable for the low cost option. The airport is busy and for a major tourist destination it is not a good face for foreign tourist coming and going. My major bugbear is once you are going to international departure or returning you are funnelled through duty free which causes major bottle necks. Immigration the smart reader queue is longer than the actual queues to see an immigration officer. But my top bug bear is in the departure areas can not find a water dispenser so you are forced to buy $5 bottles of water. This is just a rip off.

We flew in from Singapore on Scoot on Jan 18. Long wait on plane to exit as back stairs were moved to plane then withdrawn forcing all passengers off at front. Another wait on tarmac as we had to allow passengers boarding another flight to cross in front of our exit pathway. Huge queue at a standstill before we could even enter terminal which then moved at snails pace through overcrowded duty free shop area before reaching customs area which offers only 3 electronic booths for e-entry. A cavernous arrivals hall awaited filled totally with passengers attempting to retrieve luggage from the carousal and then join a line? Hard to tell really as there was absolutely no direction given by airport staff or airport signage. Customs officers appeared calm and we exited quickly once we reached the aforementioned exit point. We landed at 8.10 and walked out of the terminal at 10.15. I agree with previous comments if you can possibly fly into Brisbane the drive down will take you much less time than the frustrating wait at the Gold coast terminal.