The difference from LHR to Kingsford Smith in Sydney

Time has passed and I have calmed down over the Heathrow shocker (although it still gets me hot under the collar when I think of it) sufficiently to do a little comparison with the people and processes at the airport in my home town of Sydney.

We have a tricky thing called curfew here that restricts flight arrivals prior to 6.00am - and fair enough, the airport is close into the city and surrounded by residential areas. So at 6.01am planes start to pour out of the sky into the airport - we were 3rd to touch down and I watched out the window whilst we taxied to the terminal and there seemed to be one ever 2.5 minutes back to back, headlights twinkling in the distance.

So duty free, immigration and customs are swamped as thousands of people pour down the aisles. Generally the queue moved quickly and efficiently - first sign of a problem at the immigration desk and the offender was whisked off to a separate area for processing and the bulk of us weren't held up. (There is a bit of smarts in the commercial sector as well - the exit from duty free (booze, perfume and tobacco products mainly) funnels you into a dedicated passport/immigration queue rather than back into the main queue which means you aren't penalised for stopping for that last minute gift - now that's joined-up thinking.)

Baggage pick up is a tricky area and a little slow and that is due partly to every bag being xrayed on its way from the plane to the carousel. Then there is the queue through the green and red customs channel and this is where the queue really built up last trip. Australia has very strict quarentine laws, we don't have many of the agricultural nasties that the rest of the world has - think mad-cow, foot-and-mouth, rabies for starters - and customs takes a very hard line on stopping unprocessed foodstuffs entering the country with international travellers. Unfortunately many arriving passengers either don't understand, don't "get it" or don't care and forget to mention the fruit/dairy products/pigs innards that are in their luggage as gifts for their Aussie mates.

You approach the customs queue with a little declaration card you filled in on the plane. This is where Sydney whips Heathrow big time - there were people all the way down the line checking the forms, guiding you into the correct queues, confirming your understanding of the rules and regulations, pointing out the dump bins for discarding those forbidden fruits.

So there could be no mistaking where you were to go and what was expected of you long before you got to the top of the queue. That's the way it should be done - good signage and cheery, friendly people - a completely different experience.

These ushers had a little delegated authority as well. Scattered amongst the tourists were obvious local business travellers who know all the rules, have the frequent flyer baggage tags etc and they (including me!) were efficiently weeded out of the thronging mass and sent on their way after a swift bit of questioning.

This international travel thing is no longer any fun but the pain can be salved with a bit of common sense and courtesy. For some of course, hard work is easier than thinking.