AustralianPoochie

[QUOTE=
QF fly PER AKL on Friday & Saturday (may be seasonable).
[/QUOTE]
PER - AKL direct with QF flight, yes, its seasonal.
It stops by April, starts about Nov each year.
When your PER - SYD plane arr into SDY dom, go straight to gate 15, there is a specific gate that people go down the stairs or escalators to the bus, this is the bus that takes people back and forth between SYD dom and int terminals.
Your BP should be given to you in PER, with an outgoing pax card, which you fill in. Also might be given a QF express path card.
You can use egate (outgoing Au immi processing) to self process out, just slip passport into reader, look a bit to the right of screen, the bright light with an exclaimation mark, a slight beep and the door opens.
You pop your OPC into a clear lidded box.
Border Force officers now just stand and watch.
Outgoing int security walkthrough can be a pain though, esp with some people picked for full body scan imaging.
**Last waffle**, entering NZ, will be very similar to the outgoing out of Aust (passport processing wise/process), very different from the enter Au process.
Enjoy the NZ trip.

omk298

Thanks all - very helpful. Looking forward to it!

omk298

Sorry for re-opening an old thread, but I've moved a step forward in my trip planning and have another request for advice.

At the end of my trip I'll be flying back from AKL to SYD to catch the return MH flights to the UK. I'll be leaving SYD from T1 at 22:15. What is a sensible buffer to leave between the flight in from AKL and the MH flights out?

I'm fully aware that there's always a risk when not leaving the day before (which isn't possible), I'm looking for advice on a sensible balance of risk vs sitting in Sydney Airport for a prolonged time.

Thanks

Mwenenzi

Would AKL-SYD & SYD-KUL-LHR be on 1 ticket/PNR or separate tickets/PNRs? Guessing separate as your post 1.

If you are flying QF AKL SYD on a separate ticket QF will not through check luggage. You will need go through Au immigration with all your checked and carry on luggage. Then check in with MH landside, and then security & emigration.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/qanta...xceptions.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ocean...transport.html

omk298

As you guess it will be separate tickets. I'm assuming that the answer is 2 or 3 hours as a minimum if everything goes perfectly, and double that at least to provide some leeway. Does that sound right?

Thanks

Kiwi Flyer

With separate tickets and checked luggage, at that hour of day (i.e. not the early morning peak period for international arrivals) 3 hours is the minimum I'd be comfortable with.

deeruck

So you're saying you'd push it up if it was the peak? Due mostly to the potential for queues at customs and quarantine?

Mwenenzi

To be safe on seperate tickets: Yes. If you are arriving at 6:00 to 07:30/08:00 many wide body long haul wide body aircraft arrive. The time to get through customs and quarantine can be long (or short).
Look at SYD arrivals. Select the morning http://www.sydneyairport.com.au/flig...-arrivals.aspx

og

If winds are from the south then the small number of flights that are allowed to land between 0500 and 0600 ( ie curfew time ) delay landing until after 0600 when they can land from the north. This compresses the peak and more delays happen. I've once had an on-time 0615 touchdown but sat short of the gate for an hour while the aircraft at the gate was emptied and towed to the parking zone.

deeruck

Yeah, got it. I guess I've just been lucky to have never experienced long queues at SYD (admittedly infrequently through there infrequently).

I've got a couple of Qantas Express Arrival cards lying around from 2014 or 2015. Have these changed at all recently or would they still be fine to use (won't be able to use Smartgate)?

og

The Express card will be very useful if the hall is crowded. IIRC there is a separate line for these. But unsure how its been in the last 12 months 'coz I've just used SmartGate.

BarryAZ

An interesting thread here. Makes me feel good about a flight set I arranged for next year using AA miles from HNL to CNS via SYD. What I managed was the flight from HNL arrives in SYD at 7:30PM. We will then stay at the Rydges overnight and the next day around noon fly out to CNS on Qantas.

IMOA

The express cards are still the same as from a few years ago so should be fine to use. There's still a separate line for these between the smart gates and the normal line so just stay to the right but not so far that you join the smart gate queue. They are still very useful for those that can't use the smart gates (I give mine to friends who are on non smart gate passports)

Fwiw I think Sydney gets an unfairly bad reputation. Sure 5 years ago it could be really bad but I take around 35-40 international flights a year and and 9 of the quickest 10 arrivals would be all Sydney arrivals. If you can use smartgate, and a lot of people can, it would be unusual to take more than 20 minutes from gate to taxi queue and I would have to go back something like 4 years for an arrival which took more than 40 minutes from gate to taxi. I would however have about 10 arrivals last year at other airports which met the same criteria.

docbert

SYD deserves a bad reputation simply because it's 2 terminals with no airport-run transport between them. For connections to Qantas or Virgin the layout is annoying, but OK. For connections to other airlines it's a joke.

In the other direction (domestic -> international) it's frequently even worse, as even if you are arriving on one of those two airlines you may not be able to use their transfer buses depending on luggage.

I struggle to think of another airport in the world where you have that problem on such a large scale. Even Brisbane and Perth, whilst still being different terminals, have a free airport-run bus between the two terminals.

vbroucek

Well, that's fine for just lain arrival to SYD (or departure from). But try to do transit DOM->INT or v.v. on separate tickets (which is often the only solutions for *A flyers)...