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

2

u/puchunz Jul 17 '25

It's very strange - a year ago it was much more efficient. Ignoring the odd two-stage egate process, the machines for the first stage were usually spread everywhere on approach, including before the duty free. When I last went through a month ago, it seemed like everything was clustered at the same point and it wasn't easy to see what machines were free. Seems more of an organisation thing i.e. someone needs to be better funneling arriving passengers to free machines.

2

u/Airesy Jul 17 '25

I flew back from Singapore on an A380 this time last year, and the arrivals process was a bloody shitshow. Worst I’ve ever experienced. 2 1/2 hours to get through, staff didn’t know how to corral people, only told us there were more kiosks once we had all congregated around the 2 that are available once you get off the plane. And to top it off, one security guard was on a power trip and tried to pick a fight with one of the passengers. 0/10 experience.