Sydney Airport

✅ Trip Verified | This airport is beyond hopeless, too much air traffic, too many delays, inefficient transfers between domestic and international terminals and worst of all is the security screening. The staff are rude and slow, when you say your flight is boarding they will tell you its your fault and deliberately go slow and do additional screening, they are not getting their finest to do this job that's for sure. This airport should have never been privatised, its the poster child of what goes wrong when government assets goes to those that such every cent out of it for profits only.

✅ Trip Verified | It's been a few years since I last flew from Sydney airport, what a horrible experience. I was there at 10 am on Saturday and the International terminal is extremely crowded (I think the airport needs to be twice the size to function), food choices are expensive and low in quality, toilets are not clean, the check-in and boarding process is slow and inefficient. There are some decent luxury shopping, but that really is the only nice thing to say about this airport now.

Not Verified | I travelled from Perth to Melbourne to Auckland and then Auck to Sydney to Perth. And I just want to say that Sydneys domestic airport terminal was the most impressive of the lot! It was very flash, like a shopping mall, with lots to keep me occupied for 5 hours. Plenty of seats and food options to choose from. I look forward to travelling back there again.

Not Verified | The arrival process, collecting luggage, and clearing Immigration and Customs was straight forward and the Customs agents were polite and helpful. The computer system worked well. The arriving international passenger making a domestic connection will have a major problem if their layover is more than 2 hours. Once out of Customs, there is a free Transfer bus to the domestic terminal. Then the surprise. The traveller may not check-in at departures until 2 hours before departure. We had a 3.5 hour layover. We were not permitted entry, we couldn’t even drop our bags. There were few seats, and these were full, people were sitting on the floor in departures entry and, downstairs in arrivals - the same thing. There is one small food operation, packed with passengers and their luggage. My wife and I are seniors, pretty spry, but not happy about 1.5 hours sitting on our suitcases. When we got down to 2 hours before our domestic flight, we got through without any problem and entered a nice departure area with many restaurants, shops, and plenty of seating. We had lost all enthusiasm for shopping in an airport that had treated us so poorly.

Not Verified | Sydney must be Australia’s worst airport. Congested, expensive, poorly planned and monopoly behaviour. I rarely get in our out without delays of at least half an hour.

Not Verified | Taxi queue and how it is managed is horrible at the domestic airport. There is no traffic control or when there is, staffed by incompetent people / contractors that cannot coordinate the flow of taxi's that picked up passengers trying to leave with new taxis pulling into the rank. It is also located right behind a pedestrian crossing and the the traffic controller does not manage the flow of pedestrians to cross when taxis are loading passengers and luggage. Instead they stand there and wave taxis, private vehicles and limos through. And in front of the crossing is the limo / VIP waiting area where they constantly double park and block the flow of traffic further compounding the wait times and queue of the taxi. Expect at least 40 minutes to get a taxi.

Not Verified | I frequently fly in and out of Sydney airport and very often experience a long wait at the taxi rank. The last things one wants after a long day is to have to wait for 30 minutes or more at the highly inefficient 10 bay taxi rank. Aside from the limited number of bays, taxis come through at a snails pace. This is not of their own doing, drivers have been waiting for up to 2 hours for a fare. This is not an impossible challenge to solve. Some empathy for your customer rather than maximizing your revenues would be much appreciated.

Not Verified | As a Cabin Crew member completing tours of duties up to 20hrs with 2 days at home before next trip (yep not so glamorous) even without checked in bags it took over an hour to get through immigration and customs. There is no fast lane for crew or special treatment. So I endure what every other pax endures. The processing lines are long, disorganised. I’m left answering questions from bewildered travellers due to limited or helpful staff. Try giving feedback. It’s virtually impossible. I’m embarrassed about the inefficiecy. Corporate Greed, cost cutting, lack of foresignt has resulted in a shopping centre with Disneyland lines in an overpriced Shopping Mall. But is any really listening? There is no incentive to improve this situation.

✅ Trip Verified | Had an unbelievably terrible transit and departure experience at Sydney airport. The bus from T2 to T1 is not frequent which makes transit really difficult if there isn’t a lot of time between flights. When time is ticking, the more annoying part is the rude officers at security screening, treating travelers like criminals. The queue management was a mess and it took some time to go through customs. Even my bag had been checked twice under x-ray, they still demanded for a random check (there wasn’t any prohibited item). Worse still, when I told the officer I needed to leave immediately as there was less than 20 minutes before my flight took off, all he replied was I still have plenty of time and he even told me if I would like to do some shopping I should have come earlier. I could not believe a so-called international airport can have such arrogant and rude staff. As a frequent traveler who has been to more than 20 countries, I have to say I had the worst airport experience at the Sydney Airport and this makes me never want to use this airport again.

✅ Trip Verified | Terrible from start to finish. The traffic around the airport was a gridlock. Over an hour we covered around 2 kilometers. No one is at the loading bays controlling traffic. The security lines were a mess. Inadequate, poorly designed and lagging with passenger growth. The duty free is in your face, more so than larger airports. I am always worried of arriving in time for my flight and as a habit, plan to arrive 4 hours early. I didn't make it to my gate until 45 minutes before my flight. I truly hope they are planning to increase the security and loading areas significantly, rather than building more fashion stores. You actually have to have time to shop to buy anything!