Auckland Airport

Not Verified | This place is Jekyll and Hyde. If you are lucky and you don't happen to arrive at the same time as a flight from Tonga or Samoa or the Cook Islands you should breeze through. Customs officers are actually pleasant as are the Ministry of Ag officers. However when a flight from the islands arrives at the same time.....holy cow this place is hellish. Customs and Ministry of Ag officers are dealing with crates of papaya, taro, kava and other kinds of island foods in carry on baggage, Getting through Customs and Ag is painfully slow and Immigration is equally nightmarish. Through it all the employees try their best, but it's just not efficient for sudden arrivals of 5 or 6 international flights at the same time. Then if you are transiting to a domestic flight you've got a choice wait seemingly endlessly for the free transfer bus, or shlep your bags the half mile outside in the dark (usually) with no covered walkways to domestic .. which is tiny and easily overwhelmed. I've been flying through Auckland for over 30 years and it seems to have always been like this.

Not Verified | Absolute shambles. There was a delay in customs, then when we eventually got to security, they got these new two lane processing trays where you randomly go up and place your items into a tray then push them onto the rotating belts to proceed onto the x-ray machine. It has no system and the guy just randomly pushes trays onto the processing lane, so you could easily lose your items amongst this random method and if you are on the right hand side — you will literally not get processed because he just process the ones on the left hand side. So I’m travelling with my husband and we were split up between 10 people because the guy just won’t process the trays on the right. It’s ridiculous, no logic and causes arguments and frustrations as travelling parties are split up. No point spending millions of tax payer money on making the airport looking pretty and you can’t even get this simple processing issue sorted out.

Not Verified | Have had many positive experiences arriving or departing a lot of airports around the world however Auckland Airport is genuinely a very poor airport more times than not. Immigration on arrival is so poorly thought out that delays are just second nature regardless of how busy the airport is. The new screening on departure is modern, yes, but completely inefficient as any item that comes up with the slightest issue is bar coded then nobody seems to know how the bar code system works. More times than not there is no departure gate allocated at check in and due to the design of departure gates the walk to the likes of Gate 15 can be longer than a walk to Gate 50 in Sydney. Staff are generally unhelpful and have no idea at moving large numbers of people. Car rentals can be hit or miss with unnecessary wait times for a car booked in advance being common. Unfortunately the entire focus on the customer experience is somehow lost at this airport with even ground staff being clueless. In the past our aircraft has arrived to only have to wait for ground staff to be found just to bring the air bridge to the plane or in a recent experience, find ground staff to actually clear the gate of ground equipment. I often travel between SYD and AKL and generally leave Auckland Airport with a negative experience.

Not Verified | Visited this airport as part of a lay over from Melbourne to LAX and vise versa in return, had no issue with this airport, shopping and food outlets were modern and accessible, wi fi was a bit confusing however overall good airport, I was picked out of customs for a random check (administered by the USA Customs), the border security were friendly and explained the process, even a bit of banter about the cricket. On the way back through to Melbourne there were no issues.

✅ Trip Verified | Inefficient ground staff who took at more than 20 mins to check our baggage in. The baggage were within allowance limits and she took a long time because she did not know how to tag them. Other counters queue were going quickly except for this 3rd counter from the left and this same person refused to let my 70 yr old mother board when it was clearly announced that family with younger children and senior citizens were to board then. My 2 other senior citizens in our family who queued in the next line did not have such a problem. The problem with this staff was she did not acknowledge her lack of knowledge! She thought she was clever! her supervisor had ticked her off earlier at the counter but her ineffiency had cost us a lot of lost time and long queue at the airport check in counter! It was really unlucky of us to have been handled by her twice!

Not Verified | Fantastic security staff. I was traveling with an 11 week old baby at peak hour on a Monday morning and the staff helped me in every way from my bag to front pack and holding baby. Thanks so much.

Not Verified | I last transited through the International Terminal four years ago and it was dire. Pleased to report a considerable improvement. Shops and eateries are interesting. The terminal and toilets are actually clean. Only downside was on our return when the travelators were not working.

Not Verified | Auckland domestic airport is shocking, there aren't enough seats so everyone is crowded in to a small area, sitting all over the floor. Sydneys domestic airport was amazing and like a shopping mall, whereas Auckland has maybe 3 shops. Auckland international was nothing special either. I was only there 2 days ago but literally cant remember much about it. It had a few things to keep me occupied but not a lot. Stars below are rating both terminals. But the domestic really lets down the team. Staff are excellent though.

✅ Trip Verified | Upon arrival the concourse was overflowing with thousands of arriving passengers. It took about half an hour to reach the passport control point. Absolute chaos as the limited infrastructure and people were overwhelmed. Very poorly managed and controlled. Staff were scrambling to organize make-shift passages for the arriving passengers. In the midst of this chaos some staff seemed to have had enough and walked off the job, possibly at the end of their shift. This airport is now more like a third world airport. In my opinion fresh management with a lot of experience and ability is needed as it must be an embarrassment to country. New Zealand deserves much better.

Not Verified | Auckland airport has no dedicated customer service representatives to provide information to travellers on arrival. On arrival their aren’t enough toilets for female travellers disembarking. Hundreds of people trying to use 6-12 toilets before reaching duty free / customs. Not a single toilet attendant in sight and it shows - no toilet paper, hand towels or soap. Dirty facilities - really gross!