Terminal velocity

Australia’s shopping malls with gates attached

The airline passenger experience doesn’t just begin at the aircraft door. For many domestic flights, passengers spend more time on the ground than in the air. Yet despite the importance of airports to the Australian economy, it’s hard to argue that Australian passengers have a decent airport experience. Australia’s airports are shopping malls with gates attached, designed to herd flyers in the most inconvenient way through narrow paths on glittering duty free labyrinths while the rest of the terminal languishes ten years behind. No wonder people loiter in the shops – they’re far nicer than the airports themselves.

Promising noises are coming from Brisbane’s international terminal, where a $45 million departure hall makeover is getting underway this year to spruce the place up. Yet the fact that this is restricted to the international terminal alone emphasises the prevailing domestic/international terminal split in Australian airports, an inherited problem from decades past that airports have failed to solve. Australia is nearly unique in having global hubs where passengers have no choice but to change terminal to connect from a domestic flight to an international service on the same carrier. It’s frustrating, it’s inefficient, and it’s a bad passenger experience.