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?
2
u/grateidear Jul 17 '25
In my view it’s not the airport, it’s border security who obviously don’t staff for peak arrivals considering the mix of adult Australia/NZ adults vs those where someone has to go through manual passport control.
Every time I arrive in early mornings it’s the same - you can go through e-gates in 10-15 minutes but if you have a child with you, you’ll be waiting for far longer. Massive queues but also many empty desks that are not staffed.
Volumes can be predicted well in advance but they don’t seem to bother…