What could fix airports’ long arrival queues? A race for the Olympics

11 hours ago 1

Australia’s airports are struggling under rising numbers of international arrivals, and there are concerns delays could continue to worsen as visitor numbers grow ahead of the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane.

Melbourne Airport chief executive Lorie Argus revealed her airport’s 17 passport-reading kiosks are designed to handle 2000 passengers an hour, but up to 3800 passengers are dealt with during current peak arrival hours.

The SmartGate system has caused airport queues in Sydney and Melbourne.

Other airports around the country report similar bottlenecks. Passengers arriving in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne may get off 14-hour-flights only to wait 40 minutes or more in queues to scan their passports in kiosks, in a two-part process industry insiders say is damaging the Australian brand.

“We are way behind in regards to the international arrivals experience,” Argus said.

According to one forecast, Queensland alone could receive an additional 4.3 million international arrivals between next year and 2032, when the Brisbane Olympics are held, putting intense pressure on the border security infrastructure.

Yet relief from long delays for arrivals remains elusive, in part because of a lack of political will for change, says Tourism and Transport Forum chief Margy Osmond. She believes there is an awareness gap between political decision makers and economy-class passengers on the issue of international arrivals.

Tourism and Transport Forum head Margy Osmond questions whether politicians understand the gap in experience for passengers at Australian airports and those abroad.

Politicians often travel through hubs such as Singapore and Doha without crossing borders and exiting airports, and so often don’t see “the difference between the Australian example and what is happening in other places”, Osmond said.

“The people who have the capacity to make a decision about a spending pattern to improve the border ... may not be experiencing what’s best practice around the world because they don’t stop in those countries,” she said.

While Australia relies on the printed customs declaration cards and kiosks that process physical passports, electronic travel authority documents as well as biometric scanning in places such as Singapore and Doha make the arrivals process seamless, and comparatively painless.

Brisbane Airport chief Gert-Jan de Graaff said: “We must do all we can to make travelling to Australia as smooth as possible. Modernising and digitising the border is an essential part of that.”

Australia has driven past innovations around aviation and border control; it was among the first to implement advanced passenger processing, which checks the visa validity before a passenger is allowed to board for Australia, following the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Evolving beyond the current kiosk system, which launched in 2007, has proved difficult. Speaking at the Australian Airports Association national conference on the Gold Coast last week, Sydney Airport chief Scott Charlton revealed that after buying 40 more kiosks to expedite the arrivals process in Sydney, only eight had been successfully installed.

Griffith Institute for Tourism fellow Justin Wastnage said politicians’ travel patterns were not the culprit for Australia’s border woes.

A much larger issue was “institutional misalignment” between the various agencies overseeing the border, which include the Australian Border Force and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Wastnage said.

Melbourne Airport CEO Lorie Argus speaking at the Australian Airports Association National Conference, said there were many examples overseas of more seamless passenger arrivals systems.

Those agencies lacked a “joined-up approach” to reforming the current two-step process under which arriving international passengers present their physical passport as well as fill out a customs form, he said.

As for politicians, “It’s not a lack of awareness; it’s a lack of importance. Because there are no votes tied to it,” he said.

“If you’re looking at a cost-of-living crisis, and you’re looking at people who cannot afford to buy homes, and then you’re looking at streamlining the border, what’s going to get more attention?”

Post-pandemic growth in international travel shows little sign of slowing, with the compound annual growth rate of passenger traffic to Australia rising at 2.1 per cent, according to the Airports Council International.

In the year to August, international in-bound passengers rose almost 10 per cent to 1.81 million from 1.65 million, according to the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics.

For this reason, Melbourne Airport’s Argus said she did not want to be welcoming the Olympics to Brisbane with paper arrivals cards “for the rest of the world to see”.

Argus said she was routinely sent images from 3AW’s Jacqui Felgate reminding her [Argus] “how terrible my international arrivals experience is”.

Border Force is trialling a digital incoming passenger card that is embedded in the Qantas app on flights between Brisbane and New Zealand. The program, which replaces the physical card, began last year.

Border Force says it is committed to border modernisation and building on automation that has been in operation for almost 20 years.

It says one of the primary drivers is the digital incoming passenger card, which it calls “the foundation of our future model”.

Argus said the digital arrivals card had been proved to work in many places, including New Zealand and Bali.

Brisbane Airport’s de Graaff said: “We’re huge advocates at Brisbane Airport for modernising the border and creating a more seamless passenger journey”, which was why the airport was at the forefront of the digital arrivals card pilot program, as a first step ahead of the Olympics.

Looming deadlines around Olympic Games have forced innovation on airports in the past. The ability to check-in passengers from any airline at any desk, for instance, was a capability first rolled out before the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

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