Originally Posted by
jjglaze77
Well, we pulled the trigger...
Myself & wife are booked on the inaugural SYD-ATL on July 3rd. We will get there early enough to get some shots of the arrival into SYD as well as any gate festivities. I'm excited to finally be a part of an inaugural flight! Will you be arriving that morning,
ClipperDelta ???
I see you've booked yourselves into 2A and 2B on DL 16 SYD-LAX on July 3?
May-be...I just may be tempted to hop on DL 17 LAX-SYD on 7/1! Don't do inaugurals anymore unless it's something significant, and SYD is preeetty big...
Originally Posted by SocalFlyer089
My concern is with how small the Terminal 5 FIS facilities are. They are the smallest at the airport and were not built for jumbo jets and already gets crowded enough when 2 Aeromexico flights on narrowbody flights arrive at the same time. With Tokyo, Sydney, Brazil, and Mexico flights, it seems like it will get pretty crowded in there and cause delays like the Terminal had a few years ago. Planes would arrive but have to hold passengers for up to an hour at times until the customs facility could fit more people.
While I have no idea whether they will be expanding the FIS facilities at T5, the number of international flights for next summer are not that big, especially when you consider that most of them are spread apart from each other: the SYD flight arrives at 6am; the GRU flight gets in at 7:30am, while NRT will get in around 9:30am. Looks like the widebody arrivals will not clash, at least not for next summer so the existing facilities should be OK. And no Mexico flights come in that early, IIRC. Remember, T5 used to see DL nonstops from NRT and FRA previously as well, with MD11s where seating capacity was comparable to the 777, and even more than the 763ER (for GRU) though FRA and NRT didn't arrive at the same time either.