Just went through Sydney security and can only recommend to listen to the news reports and bring plenty of time, it was a real nightmare. Worst I’ve ever seen, actually.
Very badly trained staff usher everyone into one queue from hell and only a bit later I realised that there’s an odd “priority queue” of sorts (when you face immigration, it’s to the very left of the terminal, close to the Qantas check in). Unfortunately, this queue is as weird as it sounds, “First and Business class only” it says so I would think no chance as a status member?
In any case, it’s pretty useless as anyone who is disorganised/dumb/annoying and despite the numerous media reports still manages to get to the airport late trumps even First class passengers and gets sent straight to the front while I personally think a more appropriate treatment would be… [Enter nasty punishment of choice here].
And guess who’s the ones holding up the entire queue fiddling with the e-gate readers, looking with a stunned face wearing a huge sun hat into the facial recognition cameras and wondering why “all this high tech isn’t working” and finally NOT taking out their aerosol cans at security (they seem to ALWAYS have random aerosol cans in their luggage-why oh why)? Yes. It’s them- the late coming Economy morons that get a fancy green sticker on their clothes because they are now “priority”. Not. Happy.
I got through everything in about 90 minutes which included several breakdowns of the e-gate system which I only later realised might have been on purpose to hold up the masses in order to relieve the endless security queue coming afterwards. The non-priority queue looked even way worse so please everyone, be warned.
Now I’m in the SQ lounge which is the blissful haven in the midst of the mess that it was prior to the pandemic and solidly enjoy being back to travelling. Another year or so, I would hope, and we’re back to normal again.