BNE International Security/Immigration a zoo today

[NM]

This is the third month in a row that I have taken the same flight departing NE international. Each time I have arrived at the airport about the same time. The only difference being different days of the week (today is Friday of course, last month was a Sunday and September departure was also a Sunday). In my previous experience, and also judging by the flight loadings on the flight I was taking, Sunday mornings are a busy day for international departures from Brisbane.

However, today's flight looks to be very empty (even at T-90 mins the EF seat maps shows less than 30% load on a 747). so this must be abnormal compared with all the other departures this morning. QF check-in area was quiet and I did not take note of other areas.

When going down the escalator to the security screening area, staff were directing people to turn right to join the queue for security. The regular (non express queue) was snaking right around the entire floor space and back to to the southern escalator. Thankfully I had an express card in my travel docs wallet and I joined the express line, which was at least 40 people outside the initial "gate" to enter the screening area. And for the first time ever, there were airport staff checking people in the queue had express passes and the Immigration staff were collecting the express passes from all passengers using the express line for immigration processing.

I have seen occasions when the non-express line is faster than the express line, but today's queues were something I have never seen before. I assumed there must have been a system outage or other delay that caused the queue growth, but the airport staff managing the queues (and they seemed to be doing a good job under difficult circumstances) said it was just a very large number of people at the same time.

I was expecting the Qantas Club lounge to be a zoo too, but its reasonably quiet.

So I wonder if the EK A380 and other airlines are very busy today? Today was my longest wait to get through security and immigration I have ever experienced ex-BNE.

 

[lc_461]

I work at Brisbane Airport.. and I was there this morning. I haven't seen the lines to that extent since the last lot of school holidays... I can only assume that the airport is going to become much busier for the remainder of the year. When I went through security this morning there didn't seem to be any particular reason for the slow processing though.. I have noticed since QF changed their schedule to more AM departures there is much more congestion in the mornings. In terms of busyness - in my experience Sunday morning is the busiest time of the week with many airlines having to share check in rows and very tight utilisation of the boarding gates.

Over the past few years there has been a fair bit of growth - with more flights in the AM and also now we have GA and PR. Many airlines (such as VA/KE/IE/CZ) are also putting on more flights over the holidays. EK has also brought the A380.

More feral is the arrivals hall from ~6am-7:30am with the arrival of QF16/52/98/8, (747s,330s), KE/SQ/VA x 5/EK/PR/GA plus others.. I've never seen it so bad!

 

[cmon0005]

One thing I've always wondered is do Immigration receive money from the airlines for every express card pax they process?

 

[bass_ke]

Ahh Brisbane! So happy to no longer live and work there!

 

[ozbeachbabe]

More feral is the arrivals hall from ~6am-7:30am with the arrival of QF16/52/98/8, (747s,330s), KE/SQ/VA x 5/EK/PR/GA plus others.. I've never seen it so bad!

.....with only about 5 Customs Officers to process all those people. You seriously wouldn't want to have a domestic connecting flight unless it was several hours away.

 

[mono88]

Those cane toads again!!..not only can't they make a day either beautiful or perfect, they can't run an airport either.
Have been in that queue a few times.

 

[castie]

.....with only about 5 Customs Officers to process all those people. You seriously wouldn't want to have a domestic connecting flight unless it was several hours away.

Happened to me in January.
Two and a half hours after landing just made it to domestic terminal as my flight left...

 

[Mal]

One thing I've always wondered is do Immigration receive money from the airlines for every express card pax they process?

Express clearance is done on commercial terms. However, this payment may come from the airport (and is oncharged to airlines based on some formulae).

 

[acoolbreeze]

One thing I've always wondered is do Immigration receive money from the airlines for every express card pax they process?

No, they allocate their own budget to provide a dedicated express pass queue, but the airlines hand out way too many, so its often quicker to queue in the normal queue or use smart gate.

 

[Sprucegoose]

It seems there are some logistic issues there.

i am flying out of there next month. Never flown out of there before, looking forward to it. Something different.

 

[Cat207]

Pretty empty this afternoon. One person ahead of me through immigration. I'm now in the lounge and all alone. The scotch is good and the ice is cold.

 

[Mal]

No, they allocate their own budget to provide a dedicated express pass queue, but the airlines hand out way too many, so its often quicker to queue in the normal queue or use smart gate.

I did think there was a commercial side to the scheme - although complying with the principle that the customers aren't subject to any less checks than regular customers, but I can't find my references and what I have found doesn't show a payment being made.

 

[NM]

I did think there was a commercial side to the scheme - although complying with the principle that the customers aren't subject to any less checks than regular customers, but I can't find my references and what I have found doesn't show a payment being made.

I don't believe there is a charge per customer for its use. I think the airlines are paying for this "service" from the airport operators. Its open to all business/first class passengers plus any status passengers provided with an express pass by their airline staff. I believe its just part of the overall costs of using the airport.

 

[Foreigner]

I passed through Brisbane and what came as a surprise was a 'gatekeeper' before the immigration queue who insisted on weighing hand luggage. Haven't had that at for international flights in a long while. Business class passengers were waived through. The queue was slow. Seemed there was not enough room for the number of passengers between security screening and immigration counters.

 

[NM]

I passed through Brisbane and what came as a surprise was a 'gatekeeper' before the immigration queue who insisted on weighing hand luggage. Haven't had that at for international flights in a long while. Business class passengers were waived through. The queue was slow. Seemed there was not enough room for the number of passengers between security screening and immigration counters.

That is the usual situation at BNE. But the usually only target rollaboard cases. Backpacks are generally not weighed, so some strategic rearrangement before going down the escalators can help - and rearranged again at security screening for comfortable travel .

 

[mushez]

As 95% of my flights are through AKL INT and BNE INT - both is very common to have the gatekeepers weighing bags. Auckland more so for every bag and are more snarky, BNE will only weigh ones that look big and bulky - and only about 80% of the time, so often out of BNE have my roller with the 7kg in it, with my laptop (5kg), laptop power supply (2kg), maybe upto 3 spare batteries (1kg each), and about 1kg of paperwork and diary in the laptop sleeve under my arm. After security - in my roller it all goes.

I passed through Brisbane and what came as a surprise was a 'gatekeeper' before the immigration queue who insisted on weighing hand luggage. Haven't had that at for international flights in a long while. Business class passengers were waived through. The queue was slow. Seemed there was not enough room for the number of passengers between security screening and immigration counters.