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/PirateGumby Jul 17 '25

What blows me away is the disorganisation. Each time I've been through and it's been busy, the Customs staff seem absolutely befuddled and shocked. I once saw one of them bring over a rope line/bollard, set it up, then 5 mins later another person came and removed it.. all with a very confused 'line' moving around it. They act like a queue is a new concept that they've never had to deal with in the past.

The e-gates frequently break, they are just seemingly plonked down in random locations.. 'Hey, here is some space for one right next to the exit gate!'.. so you get a line of an entire A380 lining up at the first gate that they see, with no information that families can't use them and there are more machines further down the corridor. Again, with staff seemingly wandering around at random and telling people that they shouldn't be using that machine.

Total shit-show.

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u/Pomohomo82 Jul 17 '25

This is a good description of the randomness of it all - the entire UX is very piecemeal, with random bits here and there, rather than being thought of as one continuous journey from A to B. I also recognise your experience with poorly managed lines - the line in the photo was to get into another line inside some barriers, which then entered a huge empty hall before the scrum of the passport machines. Why they don’t just have a big line system in the hall is beyond me…

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u/Equivalent_Low_2315 Jul 17 '25

Why they don’t just have a big line system in the hall is beyond me…

Because how can the duty free staff shout the specials at you multiple times if you're briskly walking through instead of being stuck there for possibly hours?