Melbourne Airport

Very slow processing upon arrival last week on QF from Auckland. No advantage or differentiation with express card given by Qantas to Gold Frequent Flyers as all passengers were in the same 2 lines however customs staff were quick to relieve us of our passes even after an extensive wait and no express facility. When staff were asked as to why there was such a delay in arrivals we were told that we had arrived during a shift break. Hard to believe that an International airport such as Melbourne makes passengers wait while staff have a shift break. Baggage wait also too long.

Starting to look a little old in some areas. Compared to other airports it offers very little shopping options and eating options. Need to develop a better process when going through customs as it takes a long time even when it is not busy. Overall however a reasonably good airport.

Melbourne airport has the infrastructure to rate well. A minor downside however is the queues to get through customs on departure as these can be excessive. The three major factors against Melbourne are all on arrival and are the queues to get through customs/immigration (although new technology passports can scan and go) tardy baggage service and the queue to get through the quarantine checkpoint - especially when they decide to scan most bags. International arrivals tend to be clumped together which contributes to the congestion.

Having traveled through Melbourne Airport a lot in recent years I have come to notice that in particular the International Terminal has become fairly old and outdated. In the past I have also experience long queues departing internationally as well. However this trip pleasantly surprised me. Check in was very quick and new signs (bigger and clearer) makes it much easier to navigate. A new security and immigration section has been opened up which is much cleaner bigger and has facility to process more passengers. As a result immigration and security were cleared quickly and efficiently. After immigration there were even screens showing a map of the terminal and predicting walking times to all the different sections. I had to walk through some construction corridors as the new retail precinct isn't finished yet but this was not a problem and the construction corridors were clean and well signed. As per usual I had to walk through numerous duty free stores but I have come to expect this of most Australian airports. The new wing (from which I was boarding) was open spacious new clean and provided fantastic views of the airport for aviation enthusiasts such as myself. Boarding was quick and efficient with minimal fuss. While they don't have the free internet and passenger facilities of airports such as Changi Melbourne Airport is certainly getting much better and has come a very long way.

Very happy with Melbourne Immigration coming home from Singapore earlier this week connecting onwards to Adelaide. Really fast on arrival and was out of there including baggage claim and changing money within 50 minutes of touchdown and this at 4:50am. The officers let my medication come in as I had a doctors letter which helped a lot and unlike Adelaide I did not get strip searched nor my luggage gone through by the customs officer. Now I know never to fly into Adelaide internationally after two bad experiences.

Melbourne airport seems to be clean and updated from a few years ago. There is a new customs area for the departure flights even though there were counters for about 30 agents there were only about 6 on at the time. The queue took 10-15mins to get through. Annoying going through duty free to get to any gate and annoying staff members trying to sell anything. The facilities are very basic no free internet and have to pay a lot to access it. Otherwise clean simple and not overcrowded. Better than SYD airport.

For years passengers travelling to Melbourne have had to bear extreme long queues with immigration officers waiting to pounce on you for that fruit that you took with you from a flight. After many years of complaining the queues are still long. The real lack of facilities is car parking and pick up. For the entire airport there are only 5-spaces for passenger pick up and they are way further than the Qantas domestic terminal. This is a deliberate attempt to have the people paying for car park at extortion prices for just a small time. As my home airport I cannot say that they are good at all.

Departure was quite relaxed and there were no delays on boarding. The airport clearly lacks the luxury look of say Changi Terminal 3 and while it could do with some refurbishment it's reasonably comfortable with adequate shopping and dining options. After the incredibly lengthy arrival delay the last time we used MEL for an international flight my wife and I were expecting the worst on our evening return. To our amazement it took less than 20 minutes from touching-down until we walked out of the terminal. We travelled Business Class and having priority baggage handling helped to obtain our cases quicker than was the case on our previous Economy flight. While we used the Smartgate service the few passengers using the traditional Immigration lines at the same time meant we didn't progress any quicker than they did at that point. We didn't have anything to declare and were waved through Customs without having to open any of our bags or cases. A very pleasant and surprising experience.

I have been travelling through MEL several times but find that this airport is poorly designed for international transfers after a recent experience. I'm not talking about transit on the same flight (i.e. disembark security check & re-embark like EK flights from/to AKL) but rather transfers from one flight to another (within the same terminal). I was travelling from AKL on EK for a connecting flight to DOH on QR. There were no transit desk facilities in the terminal. I later found out from a shop assistant that I had to check-in the connecting flight at the gate directly. This was a different (primitive) practice from most other airports like HKG SIN PVG DXB etc. Two problems: firstly ground staff only starts working at the gate probably 1 hour before departure so PAX would have to wait until that time for check-in. For fully-booked flights they might be at risk of being denied onboard owing to late checkin. For premium PAX their privilege of accessing lounges was taken simply because they could not get a borading pass until last minute. The second problem was that there were no signpostss no helpdesk to give transfer PAX any guidances. If this is one of AUS's main airports and there are international transfer PAX then you should provide sufficient guidance. I'd not recommend MEL airport for international transfers unless ones are frequent travellers and know what to do.

Found Melbourne airport a breeze to get in and out of. Immigration was quick and I must say a friendly clerk for once in immigration was nice. No problems at this airport.