Slow Processing of Inbound PAX at SYD T1

[Matt_01]

Just gone through SYD international arrivals, immigration etc. Ticket machines 15 deep - kiosks same. Non Oz queues very very long. Can’t see how they can expand the current layout.

In early March, mid-late April and early May the SYD immigration did not seem to much of a problem. My experience in MEL on the same day seems to have been similar to yours. In MEL the machines have now changed and they spit out a bit of paper with your photo on it. The local line was longer than the foreigner line and when a second local line was opened myself and @Scenicbumblebee were deemed to be travelling together by some boarder force agent. The boarder force agent did not seem to realise I was coming from Mongolia via HKG and we were also going to separate locations i.e. 1 to BNE and myself to ADL.
We both had the sense not to create problems however we were both becoming increasingly frustrated when the boarder force agent handed me all of @Scenicbumblebee travel documents and passport on 2 occasions. In the end we just complied and ended up going through the declare line. The agent just let us though and asked me why we had been sent here, I had no purposeful answer other than to say "ask your colleague".

 

[randompunter]

Sure - but whatever the reason, it should never (or at least rarely) be quicker to go to the manual lane(s)

Was the case for us too. The family queue was definitely quicker than the e gates on the two occasions we went through SYD T1 last year. Even in CNS last week when we were almost the last pax off the SQ A350, we bypassed the long queue for the 4 E gates and were out within 10 minutes. Felt a bit cheeky.