Hundreds of people collected their boarding passes at the Gold Coast Airport's new terminal — but they aren't boarding any planes.
Many were dressed for tropical holidays, but the volunteers were brought in for a dress rehearsal in the new building to help officials iron out any processing issues. The terminal officially opens next week.
Queensland Airports Limited chief executive Amelia Evans says the mass trial is "absolutely critical" before the real deal.
"It's about testing everything that we've done to create this terminal experience for our passengers, including systems and processes," she said.
About 400 people were selected from the 1,100 who registered to have a first look at the new building.
"We've had everything from different age groups, older generation to young generation, we've got [people with] different physical abilities [and] we've got people who speak different languages," Ms Evans said.
"The learnings from those observations will give us a chance to tweak a few things before we open the terminal next week."
Passenger growth
The first domestic passengers will travel through the airport next week while the first international flights are expected in October.
Construction on the new terminal started in 2019 and Ms Evans said its completion would set the city up for future growth in tourism.
"We saw very strong domestic recovery when borders opened back in July, then December," she said.
The expansion doubles the airport's footprint and is expected to cater for growing passenger numbers.
"Domestic is outperforming pre-COVID levels," Ms Evans said.
"We need this space, we need this new terminal."
Annually, 6.5 million passengers travel through the Gold Coast airport.
It's hoped the terminal expansion will allow 10 million passengers every year by the end of the decade.
Tickets to nowhere
"We're going to a few places without actually going to those places," said trial participant, Brianna Haverfield.
She held boarding passes with destinations including Darwin, Nadi (Fiji) and Phuket (Thailand).
"[It's a] once in a lifetime experience. When are we ever going to do something like this again?" she said.
Louise Haverfield said it was a fun trial to be involved in after a couple of years with limited travel.
"We haven't been able to travel anywhere recently so why not come and pretend we're travelling and see what it's like for when we actually come," she said.
Signing up was a no-brainer for Nima Zaree, who has been studying Aviation Management at Griffith University.
"I'm in aviation. I love it, so I said, 'Why not?'" Mr Zaree said.
"It's very exciting and I'm interested to see so many volunteers here."
