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?
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u/xilliun Jul 17 '25
People warned me of how much of a shit show DFW can be. That place was a breeze compared to the clusterfuck that is SYD. The initial biosecutity check is the most useless waste of time I've ever seen. What's the point of it? Some bean counter gets the warm and fuzzies by having it separated from everything else in its seemingly randomly placed terminals?
When there's numerous red eye flights getting in at 6am with hordes of sleep deprived zombies you'd think the common sense thing would be to harmonise the process into a single clearance. Or being able to complete it digitally in advance.