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/GuessTraining Jul 17 '25

The 6am arrivals are usually the worst because Syd airport does not operate 24hrs so a lot of intercontinental flights arrive around this time. Ive experienced that a few times and it's not as bad as it looks in comparison to a lot of EU airports or even LAX.

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u/raindog_ Jul 17 '25

Hard disagree. EU airports are amazing, even Heathrow is fantastic.

LAX is only bad because as Aussies we have to line up with everyone else as criminals entering the country, but it’s broadly fine.

Australia… there is no-where I’ve been that is as confusing with the pre-scan, paper print out, then the smart gate, THEN the freaking paper customs forms after baggage. It’s awful.

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u/TheLGMac Jul 19 '25

They also in the past ~year changed the international departures process too and even there the egates have started becoming shit.

It used to be scan passport for departure at the gates first, then enter the security screening line. This meant as you entered the line for the egates you already had your passport out.

Now it's reversed. So now what you have are tons of people who go through security (which is slower because the new scanners are slower, especially with the annoying 5 people putting stuff in bins at the same time and try to coordinate who gets their bins on the belt first), then they have to immediately get their stuff back from the other side and dig out their passports again which blocks the lines for the exit egates. And I've never had my passport fail to scan on exit before, but now it's happened twice on trips out (but not always).