Sydney Airport: a jarring way to begin an Australian sojourn

Sydney Airport has announced that it received one million more passengers this year than it did last year, and that its profit increased 9 per cent over the same period, to almost $350 million. This is great news for shareholders in Sydney Airport Holdings, but let's be clear: Sydney is not a good airport for international visitors.

Perhaps it's not too bad if you're coming from the US, where most major airports seem built from mismatched demountables and, for a long time, the Delta terminal at New York's John F. Kennedy International literally did not have a roof. (The canvas top was fun, in a glamping kind of way, until you realised that pigeons and roller suitcases don't play well together.) But if you're coming from many places in Asia, or Europe, Sydney Airport is a jarring way to begin an Australian sojourn.

The experience starts with the insistence on pushing international arrivals through a duty-free shop before they even hit immigration. Most tourists to Australia are reeling from extremely long journeys. It's possible they're looking for a so-so deal on a two-bottle pack of Bombay Sapphire, but isn't it more likely they're craving a quick cab ride and a nice lie down? Is there a tackier way of greeting a foreign visitor than aisles of surgically lit liquor?

Then there's passport control. People getting off long-haul flights are tired. This is why they need to be herded, like sheep with unusually swollen ankles, through clearly marked queues. Crowd control becomes all the more important when dealing with the completely predictable rush of early morning flights. Yet I've been there plenty of times when there's been no guidance at all, just a mass of smelly humanity surging towards the booths, then those biometric passport machines which can't quite process how unrecognisably horrible you look after 24 hours in seat 47B.