Hello All-
I have never traveled out of the US, so I have no idea what to expect on my upcoming trip to Australia. Any advice/help/tips etc. will be greatly appreciated. I will be traveling from Chicago O'Hare to Perth Australia on Quantas Airlines and American Airlines in the US. All of my connecting flights are within the US and Australia. To give you guys an idea of my travels, my itinerary is as follows:

Departing:
Chicago IL (O'Hare) to Dallas(TX) Fort Worth to Sydney then on to Perth
Returning:
Perth to Sydney to San Francisco (CA) to Chicago (IL) O'Hare

Customs- At what points of my travels will I need to pass though? Which airports? Also, what all will it entail?

Baggage- If I were to check my baggage, will it make it to Perth on its own? Will I have to get it and re-check it? If so, will that have to happen at each connecting airport-- I'm debating on whether I should carry-on verse checking my bag. I'll be in Australia for 2 weeks so I'd rather check the bag, but it appears that all of my layovers range from 1 hour to 2. I just worry about missing a connecting flight ...

Thanks in advance to whomever responds--I'm sure I'll thing of though question/concerns.

You posted in the US forum.
Re-post in the Australia forum.

We recently flew from Miami to Los Angeles to Auckland to Perth. Our luggage made it through. We went through Immigration/Customs in Perth and because we are from the US there was an expedited lane which we used. Could not have been simpler.

Agree that you need to post on the Australia forum; many (most?) people here have not been to Australia.

You post on the area you are going to - not coming from.

The OP did post on the OZ board the same time she posted here. Both are applicable IMO since she is also asking what to expect on the US legs.

lmn02: Check this page for information about transfers at Sydney http://www.sydneyairport.com.au/prep...n-transit.aspx


For you return flight, You will go through Immigration at SFO. Your bags will be checked through but you will still need to collect them at SFO where you will go through Customs. Then there is a bag drop and then you proceed to your domestic gate which might be in a different terminal.

You'll clear customs in Sydney going to Oz and in SFO coming home.

Your arrival in Sydney will be at the same time as about 400 flights from all over East Asia and the immigration hall at SYD will be a mob scene. This is because flights from various points in East Asia (Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, etc.) to Australia are all 9-12 hour runs, which means they are scheduled as overnight flights that arrive at the crack of dawn in Sydney - like flying from the US to Europe or the US to sub-equatorial South America.

Make sure you have all your paperwork done before you enter the numerous queues.

You will have to claim your bags at Sydney and recheck them, just like at SFO. You do NOT have to claim your bags in your US domestic transfer (your connecting flight at DFW). I don't know about your Perth-Sydney-SFO-ORD route. We had to claim and recheck bags at Sydney but our flights (Adelaide-Sydney, Sydney-DFW) were NOT on the same ticket. That matters.

Sydney is NOT a normal airport. The domestic and international areas are completely separate (and several kilometers apart). There is no free transfer provided by the airport (unlike going from terminal to terminal at O'Hare or DFW). This is far different from just about any airport you've visited.

If you are flying on the same airline, such as QANTAS on both your transpacific and transaustralia flights, then you can ride the transfer bus that QANTAS provides to go from the domestic to the international terminal or reverse. CHECK THE SYD INFORMATION on this. If there is no airline-provided transfer, then you can take a cab between the two terminals - it's faster than the bus and not that much more and a cab is cheaper than the train (this gets complicated but it's a stupidity built into Sydney's City Rail system).