docbert

Just a heads-up for anyone coming into SYD International and transferring to Virgin domestic.

The Virgin transfer desk IS operational (after being closed for most of the past few years), but it is incredibly poorly signposted - you basically need to already be headed towards it in order to see the signs that are pointing to it. It's in the same location as before, so after you pass through customs you need to turn LEFT and head to the far end of the terminal. Their bus between terminals is not operating, so you then need to walk all the way back to the other end of the terminal to catch the T-Bus over to the domestic terminal.

From catching the T-bus it's clear that most people don't know that the transfer desk exists - when I was there, almost everyone on the bus was carrying their checked luggage, despite the vast majority of it already being tagged to a destination beyond SYD. This significantly slowed down the boarding of the bus.

CPMaverick

Good info to share I noticed this when I flew into SYD last week (but I was transiting to a QF flight). Shame VA doesn't have their bus service, but especially if you have bigger bags it's a nice option to immediately check them.

As for taking the T-bus with luggage, after seeing about 50 people in line for the QF domestic transfer, I decided to take my luggage on the T-bus. The T-bus was a large motor coach and the luggage went underneath. It didn't seem to delay the bus at all to load it. Not sure if that is the normal bus (certainly wasn't before Covid!). Took me 10 seconds to check my bag at the QF domestic terminal. I wouldn't even bother looking for the QF transfer next time based on that experience!

docbert

They are using a mixture. The bus before mine was the standard 'T-Bus' bus with luggage racks inside. The one after that, which I ended up being on, was a coach as you described.

I was about the 4th person onto the coach - mainly because I walked around the 8-10 people in front of me who were waiting to have their luggage loaded onto the coach. Whilst I'll agree having luggage is cleaner with the coaches than the bus where it has to be carried on-board, it still definitely slows down the loading process.

CPMaverick

In some cases, I could see that. In my case it definitely didn't. There was never a queue for the bus, so we waited until it was full, which took about 15 minutes. Luggage was loaded just as quickly as it arrived. My flight was delayed so maybe it was a slower time than usual. I can see if there's a long line how it could slow things down though.

I imagine there's a learning curve for the UA flyers in terms of the VA experience. Better signage would definitely be a good thing.

docbert

Ahh - that's the difference. Both times I've used the bus this year there was a line that was more than one bus loads worth of people long. They only load one bus at a time (even though at one point on an earlier trip there were 2 buses extras lined up behind the one they were loading, and at least 2 bus loads worth of people ready to board!)

If there's no line, then yes, the luggage wouldn't really slow the whole process down. When there's a line, it does.