Sydney Flights

Qantas Airways is Australia's home airline.
It offers flights to and from most places. It also has a Frequent Flyer Program. I collected enough frequent flyer points for 2 adults to Fiji from Sydney. Awesome experience.

I was impressed with both the gate waiting area as well as the very comfortable general waiting area provided to passengers awaiting flights. Surrounded by duty free and other shops, these airports provide relaxing and comfortable areas before you board your flight.

After clearing immigration, you will easily find money changing services inside the airport. Interestingly, they cater to the Japanese visitor with an express line for changing yen to Australian money.

I used both the International and Domestic airports in Sydney. Both were very modern and easy to use. The International airport is farther from downtown but has a wonderful aerial view of the city as the airplane is landing across the bay and onto the runway that seems to be practically built on the water.

Depending upon where your hotel or lodgings are located, it will take you from about 20 minutes to almost an hour to reach your destination - especially if you have to drive in rush hour traffic.

I needed to go to North Sydney, which I now know means across the bay from Sydney downtown, and it took about an hour for my taxi to make that trip. Unfortunately, since I am an American and he was a Muslim from Bangladesh, I was regaled with his negative opinions of the American invasion of Iraq for a solid hour. Luckily, most taxi drivers are very personable and interesting which makes these isolated taxi driver incidents bearable when they occur.

The airlines flying out of these airports seemed to me to be stricter on weight limitations than some of their American counterparts. Since I was on a three-week trip, I had a large piece of luggage that happened to be overweight when I checked in for a domestic flight. I had to remove items from my luggage and place them in another bag in order to meet their regulations.

If you do use either of these airports I think you will find them to be easy to navigate, friendly to passengers and efficient and effective in their operations.

If you have a flight departing Sydney airport do NOT make the mistake of thinking the airport is open 24 hours and has a lounge. The airport closes at midnight and the lounge is a tiny corner of the airport with uncomfortable seating, try to come to day of your flight.

The best (or should I say the only quick & easy ) way to get to Sydney or Australia in general from overseas or in fact from most other places in Australia is to fly there. The airport is just south of the city, and there're numerous shuttles and buses that will bring you into Sydney proper, as well as a dedicated branch of the city's City Rail subway system. If you opt for the subway, it's A$11 one way. There's also a shuttle that will take you in for about $8.

I flew Qantas to Sydney and although the leg space could use a major improvement in economy class the service was very good. Every seat has its own little screen with quite some channels on. There are many recent movies on, aswell as many different series and other programs. The staff was very helpful and friendly and took good care of everyones needs. The food I have to say was also delicious. This was actually the first time I liked the food served very much. All in all I'd say fly Qantas!!

On completion of our brief stay, we watched the Air Niugini Boeing 707 taxi in at Sydney's International Airport, knowing that this was the final stage of our long journey to Papua New Guinea. We flew out on my 30th birthday and I was thinking that, if I had arranged to cross the International Dateline a few days later than we actually did, maybe I could have missed out on it and made myself a year younger! While in Australia, we rented a car and had complete freedom to roam along the coast in the area.