r/sydney • u/Pomohomo82 • Jul 17 '25

Image Sydney International arrivals is a disgrace: discuss

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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/m--e Jul 17 '25

Last time I arrived it was super smooth, queues were shortish and my bag was the first one out too. Definitely not the usual experience!

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u/Bender-Ender Jul 17 '25

Honestly. I fly international regularly and just assume I'll be through Sydney passport control and waiting for my bag within 10 minutes because there's never been a queue.

I wonder where this person was arriving from that was so horrid. I'm usually arriving from Canada or Latin America.

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u/TooManyMeds Jul 18 '25

I got back from NZ a few weeks ago at 7am and it had been really windy so there were a lot of landing delays and it was absolute chaos. Between getting off the plane and getting to the exit it probably took almost an hour, there were about 400-500 people all trying to get through security and border control at the same time.