Gladstone Airport is an airport serving Gladstone, a city in the Australian state of Queensland. It is located in the western suburbs of Gladstone, about from the town's centre, off Aerodrome Road. The airport is owned and operated by the Gladstone Regional Council which took control of it by operation of the Local Government Reform when the Gladstone-Calliope Aerodrome Board was dissolved on 15 March 2007. The main supplier of scheduled passenger air services is QantasLink, a subsidiary of Qantas, with most services non-stop to, or from Brisbane Airport. Virgin Australia commenced services to Brisbane 17 October 2011. They further announced at the launch of flights that a third-daily service would be added to the route from 16 January 2011. This has further been increased to six week-daily services since early 2013 mostly on ATR 72 aircraft with the Embraer 190 and the Boeing 737-800 also making regular appearances in the schedule. As of the 17th of July 2017 Alliance airlines has started to make 34 jet services between Gladstone and Brisbane. As of March 2008, QantasLink was scheduled to operate about 38 return services per week between Gladstone and Brisbane using Dash 8 aircraft with seating from 50 to 74 passengers. In addition, a small number of flights operate northwards to Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns. The Gladstone Regional Council commenced an upgrade of the airport in 2008. The council announced that the airport would not shut down during the upgrade. In 2011 the late and liquidated Air Australia known as Strategic Airlines at the time began regular flights from Brisbane Airport and back with their Airbus A320 fleet; this only lasted around 4–5 months before ceasing operations to Gladstone due to the low amount of passengers on each flight causing the airline to lose money. In 2017 Cobham Aviation Services AustraliaBoeing 717 fleet began ceasing daily flights to the regional town due to higher demands in longer domestic route and also due to passenger numbers reducing after the mining boom from 2012-2016, because this Sunstate Airlines and Qantaslink had to increase operations to Gladstone to 6 daily flights. After this Cobham only flew in to fill in for any Q400 flights that had issues. Though rumour have it that they might be making a few returns during 2019 due to an increased number of jobs becoming available in the mining industry.
Facilities
The airport resides at an elevation of above sea level. It has 4 parking stands using a state of the artdouble level parking bay design, able to hold from Q200s to 737s, it also has a large GA parking areas to the west of the main terminal. It has one runway designated 10/28 with an asphalt surface measuring, able to hold up to a Boeing 737 or an Airbus A320.
Airlines and destinations
Ground transport
Buses operate between the town centre and the airport, but are only operational from Monday to Friday between 6am and 6pm. Taxis are also available, as are rental cars.
