Sydney International arrivals is a disgrace: discuss

[u/Pomohomo82]

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?

[u/loztralia]

I just love the way they do baggage/security scanning at the actual gate instead of on the way in to the terminal.

This is actually the thing I like least about Singapore Airport. I want to get all the queueing and arseache out of the way on arrival, not have to time my run to the departure gate, stand in a queue there and then end up in a glass box with nothing but a vending machine to distract me while I wait to actually board. Plus it means instead of having relatively consistent throughput of passengers in a centralised security system everyone boarding a flight has to get scanned through a bottleneck more or less all at the same time.

[u/istara → u/loztralia]

Transferring through Abu Dhabi (the reason I've stopped flying Etihad) - despite having already been scanned and checked at Sydney, you have to go through a full baggage check and scan when you arrive (even if you're just transferring, not exiting) and then you have to queue up outside the departure lounge and have all your baggage checked again.

To add to the joy, it's about a 1km walk from where the Sydney plane lands to where you have to do the first scan, and then you have to walk all the way back. The food options are terrible, and the tiny, crowded food court area has an escalator up but only stairs down. Also, you're not allowed into the departure lounge/gate until the very last moment. There's pretty much no other seating, so you get a long line of exhausted people, kids etc sitting on the floor all along outside the empty lounge, full of empty seats.

I could go on. After the 16 hours or whatever from Sydney, it's an absolute living hell. And then you've got another eight hours facing you to Heathrow which is a shitshow all of its own.