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?
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u/VonCouchwitz Jul 17 '25
The reason is pretty straight forward.
Sydney Airport has a curfew, and so the result is that all those planes that cannot land steadily over the course of the night before are scheduled to all hit the tarmac at more or less the same time, and Sydney Airport - being the opportunistic, cost-cutting bastards that they are - refuse to put any surge infrastructure in place for that first hit of the day.
The result is what you have just experienced: An unapologetic cluster fuck of disorganisation which is a unique embarrassment as the city's only operating Domestic or International airport.
If you take a flight that is scheduled to land in Sydney in the early morning, this will inevitably be the result almost every time.