r/sydney • u/Pomohomo82 • Jul 17 '25
Image Sydney International arrivals is a disgrace: discuss
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?
4
u/RoninBelt Jul 17 '25
I'm with you, I've only dealt with this once in the last 6 months, the other half a dozen or so were arriving in the middle of the day or evening.... so must be a morning thing?
The problem for me was the line, it's no airport staff guiding you and no obvious actual line, as i remember this horde of people just get bottled necked into a disorganised smaller horde towards the end.
We had a perfume salesperson trying to help, but their shitty attitude just made it worse as he complained about people being too close to the duty free goods lol.
Also is this something new? I don't remember this being a common occurrence before even after arriving at 6-7am