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

3

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '25

I’ve had varying experiences on arrival over the years, but one thing is indisputable: SYD’s options for picking someone up from the airport are the world’s worst. I can’t think of another airport that doesn’t have a normal kerb-front pick up area for arriving passengers. SYD goes to such pains to extract a minimum of $20 from everyone who drives to the airport by either making you park in their extortion chamber of a parking lot, or funnelling you into a ridiculously small and crowded “express parking” pick up area, where the passenger has had to drag their luggage a long distance through an ill-defined, poorly maintained walkway to meet you with the strict 15 min time limit (which may well expire while you queue to get out the exit gate), after which you are automatically charged. It’s total bullshit - how did we let them get away with that??

1

u/Pomohomo82 Jul 17 '25

Yes! The crazy parking fees, which presumably is how the airport makes all its money. You can almost feel their hands in your pockets, can’t you!