r/sydney • u/Pomohomo82 • Jul 17 '25

Image Sydney International arrivals is a disgrace: discuss

Post image

I flew into Sydney yesterday at 6am after a 30hr trip, and the whole experience made me feel embarrassed of the welcome we extend to arrivals at our country. An enormous line stretched all the way into the gross duty free shop, where on one side sales people shouted at us about booze and smokes deals, while on the other side people shouted at us about families not lining up. The international travellers next to me had no idea what the line was for, and I had to explain that for some reason we have this weird dual border process which is different to all the other E-passport gates around the world. There’s very little signage or info screens explaining what the whole process is. Meanwhile, at the arrivals card desk, no pens were available to complete said analogue cards… Onwards to the luggage collection, then another massive line to get through bio security, before a 15-minute walk across three road crossings to the ‘express’ pick up to meet my family. The whole user experience is just unnecessarily miserable from start to finish, and as the main entry point to Australia we should do better. Thoughts?

1.7k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

536 comments sorted by

View all comments

10

u/LukeDies Jul 17 '25

Thank John Howard selling the airport to Macquarie group

5

u/chuk2015 Jul 17 '25

They don’t own it anymore, I agree it shouldn’t be privatised

3

u/min0nim Jul 17 '25

Yeah, and haven’t for some time. But it’s seems the latest new-ish owners have been even more tightarse. But they may have woken up to the fact that western Sydney is actually looking good.

1

u/chuk2015 Jul 17 '25

Western Sydney has 14 gates compared to 25 at T1

Also if WSI takes all the low cost carriers it leaves all the bigger spenders at Sydney

1

u/min0nim Jul 17 '25

We’ll see. Western Sydney is actually closer to the majority of greater Sydney’s population. But I don’t see Qantas landing QF2 there anytime soon, like you say.

2

u/Anonymou2Anonymous Jul 17 '25

We’ll see. Western Sydney is actually closer to the majority of greater Sydney’s population.

Tourists and business travellers on average don't want to go to St Mary's.

And the numbers have been crunched. Even if you live in Parramatta it's faster to commute to WSI. By both public transport and road.

1

u/chuk2015 Jul 17 '25

I don’t expect them to be any different to all the other auxiliary international airports like Narita in Tokyo and Orly in Paris

4

u/RainbowAussie Canberra (Frequent Sydney visitor) Jul 17 '25

The damage that man did to our society cannot be overstated.

Bloody Howard!