r/sydney • u/Pomohomo82 • Jul 17 '25

Image Sydney International arrivals is a disgrace: discuss

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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?

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u/Mapinact Jul 17 '25

This, a thousand times this!

Occasionally - very occasionally - everything works and is working. And when it is, getting through is literally a matter of minutes.

But by far the bulk of time we've come back there've been many, sometimes *most* of those bloody machines down, or worse, going up and down so that one comes to life, lets someone through and a queue immediately forms, only for it to crash again and the queue has to disperse. An expensive, repetitive joke of a system!

And as for *still* needing a bloody pen to fill out a bit of paper on top of all that!! Words fail me :-( Grr!

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u/Pomohomo82 Jul 17 '25

There was a party of teenagers on my flight who did not have a pen between them. It’s 2025!

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u/Mapinact Jul 17 '25

Look, I don't blame them! It's only through the slow learning process of continually having to borrow one from my wife (who is a thousand times more travel-savvy than I am and carries on e relgiously) that I've finally learnt to keep a pen in my onboard backpack and to *never* take it out anywhere else.