Melbourne Airport

My experience dates back to May this year so I apologise for the late report. If I were an overseas visitor arriving at Tullamarine for the first time I would feel exasperated. We arrived at 0810 from Auckland flying business class on Air NZ. Immigration control only had four desks open and with several overseas arrivals around the same time as our flight it became obvious that more desks need to be operating. Then once we were waved through immigration and retrieved our luggage another very long queue for customs resulted in a 50 minute wait for our cases to be inspected. There were too few immigration officers on duty on that morning and with just about every passenger's case being opened for inspection it resulted in an inordinate delay. I noted that some of these Custom officers had a very surly demeanour and one in particular was extremely rude to a Vietnamese woman who was queued two ahead of us. Customs needs to look closely at the people skills of its officers at this airport because for many it will be their first experience with an Australian official. The temperament of several on this particular morning was a cause for dismay. Customs department and the immigration department need to staff this airport properly instead of doing things to "world benchmarks" as the reply from the Customs Minister stated in his email response. Obviously the "world benchmark" must have been extracted from a Third World airport. Shame on you Melbourne Airport. And the parking costs at Melbourne Airport are now officially the highest in the world - another rip off by the operator.

The process of customs officers checking each passengers arrival card prior to going through customs results in excessive delays. I am from Melbourne living in London and found this procedure completely disheartening; if Melbourne weren't my home town I would feel this initial arrival to Melbourne quite negatively. The necessity for customs procedures to be tight is appreciated however the arrival area and luggage carousels needs to be arranged properly.

Love the airport the shops are super with good range of choice I like that its small and not disjointed like larger airports food is good quality with great choice. Dislike exorbitant cost of parking short term ludicrous! On thinking Sydney is even worse - does the airport only make a buck from its parking?

Coming back from the US in June I was quarantined for over an hour being tested for Swine Flu. Found my bag waiting for me next to the carousel no line at customs was waved through and exited 10 minutes later. Excellent! Skybus is expensive you can catch a metlink bus but you need to transfer to a train at Broadmeddows. Take the skybus saves you an hour of stress trying to figure out where to go and it takes you straight to Southern Cross Station. Its so easy to walk from terminal to terminal since they're all part of the same building save Terminal 4 which is Tiger Airways and separate from the other three terminals.

Touting by limo drivers at T1 & T2 early morning and late evening has become a real pain for arriving passengers. It is illegal the public announcements say so and the signs say so but the airport is doing nothing visible to stop these pushy touts hassling arriving passengers. The airport has extensive video surveillance they can see what is happening but they don't are. Makes Melbourne look like a 3rd world airport. With the lack of proper public transport options they will unfortunately persist!

Recently had the slowest arrival experience of any international flights my wife and I have taken over the past 15 years - including our previous arrivals at Melbourne. We disembarked at about 2220 & collected our luggage at the carousel at 2245. Ominously there were approximately 150 people queued for Customs when we first arrived at the carousel. By the time passengers from our flight had collected their luggage there was a single queue that snaked twice around carousel 1 before feeding into the existing three lines of people who had been waiting when we arrived. As we waited patiently passenger from another flight collected their bags & joined the queues. It took until 2345 to reach a Customs Officer & be waved though after a quick check of our luggage. I don't blame Customs staff who were obviously doing their best with patience & good humour but seeing almost everyone being asked to open their cases I could understand the delays. I doubt whether too many people waiting to clear Customs that night would have any positive thoughts about Melbourne Airport or maybe Melbourne & Australia in general. Either there needs to be more Customs Officers on duty or some further risk analysis needs to be undertaken with a view to limiting searches of suitcases to a much smaller proportion than was carried out while we were there.

Passing through Melbourne on two occasions as a transit passenger was a disappointing experience. The arrival pier was shabby and in need of re-carpeting and decoration. Only on reaching the arrivals duty free area did the appearance of the airport improve. Transit passengers were required to negotiate what appeared to be poorly finished service corridors and stairs in order to reach the departures security search area. The departure area itself was attractive with a good range of duty free outlets unfortunately the toilets were in need of some deep cleaning.

I flew out of Melbourne on a Qantas domestic flight. The airport works OK with little queue for check in or security but it looks in need of modernisation. My main issue was that the food and drink options airside were awful. There are lots of different outlets all with different branding but they all sell the same products for the same prices. I bought a sandwich which was stale a chocolate muffin which tasted more of banana and a coffee which was cold - and this cost nearly $20. Eat before you get to the airport.

One of the most annoying things about this airport is the very high cost of short term parking which is $45 a day. This is more than a car park in central Melbourne. There is an undercover "Long-term" car park which is quite misleading. This car park charges the same as the short term car park which it shares the building with. I have no idea what the discount applying is and at $90 overnight it is expensive. I agree with the comments about baggage and customs delays but there again this is an island nation and we think every one wants to come here. The domestic terminals are quite decent but then there is no immigration or much baggage there.

While I understand the arguments an airline operator might make about the need to make a return on its lease Melbourne Airport's continued refusal to install free Internet terminals (emulating Singapore) is poor. Singapore may be essentially a government-run airport but Melbourne is boring by comparison and it is about time that passengers were offered a small 'freebie' given the various airport charges that are included in the prices of most tickets. Of course it would be unfair to claim that Melbourne Airport is the only Australian airport to fall behind progressive transport hubs like Changi Airport. While Melbourne Airport's per-passenger processing fees are lower than most other Australian capital city airports it ought to give something back to passengers who contribute a huge daily amount in parking fees and indirectly in airport income by supporting overpriced shops that block one's way once airside in the international terminal as others have observed. There seems to be a lack of drinking water fountains in the Virgin Blue terminal unforgivable in an often warm to hot climate like Melbourne's (in summer and early autumn at least) and another attempt to force us all to purchase bottled water should we forget to bring non- alcoholic drinks from home office or hotel.