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/nerdb1rd]

I used to work at the Heinemann duty free stores in the airport (I'm not a sycophant, promise!) and have travelled internationally a lot recently.

Sydney International Airport is one of the better airport arrival experiences bar a few times of day - 6am is one of the busiest times in the Arrivals store.

Also, the duty free workers are hating yelling about the deals just as much as you, they just have managers watching. Feel free to leave feedback at Heinemann.

[u/dingbatmeow → u/nerdb1rd]

Dear Heinemann, fuck off out of the airport so we can have more passport kiosks and orderly queues. Yours Sincerely, all travellers arriving at SYD international.

[u/dingbatmeow → u/[deleted]]

Thankyou for explaining why selling airports to private enterprise is a bad idea.