by Flying over the harbor and into Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport, window seat claustrophobia can be tolerated because of the amazing view of the deep blue sea in the heart of the city.
For the 100,000-odd travelers who have to overcome a hectic mix of snaking queues, overpriced cafes, overweight bags and encroached personal space before entering or leaving the city each day, the broad view of Sydney stands out loudly. .
But, hidden from travelers, a “mini-city” powers Australia’s busiest airport, where more than 30,000 people work every day. Some operate complex networks of baggage conveyor belts, others transport cargo to and from planes or put hundreds of thousands of liters of jet fuel into jumbos in a matter of minutes.
Then there are people who work to secure air travel. Besides sky marshals and border security officers, there are intelligence operatives researching potentially crooked airline workers, and agents with dogs trained to sniff out hard drives, memory cards and other smuggled contraband.
Although travelers will see officers with tasers and rifles, most will not be aware of the bird watchers with shotguns, or the plane monitors in the air traffic control tower whose only responsibility is aircraft movements with a pen and clipboard to count.
Then there are people who don plastic gloves before sifting through a bag of potentially hazardous lost sex toys.
Look at the sky
For a facility that relies on coordinating more than 800 businesses and organizations with military precision, having Greg Hay as the airport’s general manager of operations makes sense, since he was previously in the air force.
Much of Hay’s morning is spent studying weather reports, and not just for Sydney.
“Weather is a key factor here,” says Hay. “A typhoon up around the Hong Kong region can cause a lot of disruption in the schedule here.”
On windy days, air traffic controllers have to change the direction in which the airport’s two runways operate.
Bad weather can wreak havoc at Sydney Airport due to the strict curfew that stops commercial passenger traffic between 11pm and 6am to give nearby residents a chance to escape loud noise.
The airport, built 104 years ago just 8km from the CBD, is also slot-restricted, meaning that there can be no more than 80 take-off or landing movements per hour, inclusive in 15 minute chunks.
If weather conditions at distant airports delay inbound flights or local storms block outbound planes, little is given in the schedule.
“It just takes a few things to start getting some of that complicated data out of whack,” says Hay.
The curfew and hourly movement cap are strictly policed. Airlines that break the curfew without permission are fined $313,000, and to ensure the hour limit is respected, monitors sitting in the air traffic control tower are marking movements with pens and clipboards.
The airport’s chief executive, Geoff Culbert, pleaded with the government to modernize its laws and slot system. The airport does not have the power to allocate slots to airlines.
He says fear of breaking the law means the airport is regularly restricting movements below even the legal 80-hour limit.
Culbert is also among aviation figures who have accused Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia of “slot-cramming” by scheduling more services than they plan to operate in order to block rivals, and the extra flights strategically canceled.
Related: Sydney airport CEO accuses Qantas of strategically canceling flights to stifle competition
Cancellation rates out of Sydney tend to be among the highest in the nation, and critics cite this as proof of slot abuse, although major airlines have repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
The federal government is yet to respond to a review proposing amendments to the laws. Meanwhile, Hay must ensure that the facility operates smoothly even during times of major disruption. He says on days with bad enough weather, it can feel like a race to get every flight in and out before the curfew kicks in.
Organized chaos
In the period from December 14 last year to January 3, it was estimated that 2.6 million passengers traveled through the airport terminals, a sign that the recovery of the pandemic is complete.
“The week before Christmas is a very busy week for us,” says Hay. “The check-in halls are rising, we have passengers everywhere.”
In December, 3m pieces of luggage traveled through a complex system in the terminal basement that delivers suitcases from conveyor belts at check-in desks through security screening to their correct planes.
“They go through a security scan, then they go into a big sorter that decides which flight, a bit like the end of Toy Story 2 where there’s a lot of bags going around, you know, in an almost underground roller coaster series . – up here,” says Hay.
Bags are allocated to containers and taken to aircraft. An unofficial memorial wall of bag tags dropped through this process represents a fraction of the pieces that are mishandled or ultimately lost.
Hays says most don’t realize the scale of staff – more than 30,000 a day – needed to keep the airport running. This includes ground handlers, cleaners, engineers and caterers.
“People often describe the airport as a mini-city,” he says.
One of Hay’s senior colleagues, Bjorn Nielsen, manager of the airside operating license and aviation safety, deals with less visible tasks.
Keeping birds away from airplanes is an important safety issue. US Airways flight 1549 collided with a flock of birds minutes after taking off from New York’s LaGuardia airport in 2009, forcing it to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River.
Related: Eyes on the sky: the air traffic controllers watching over 11% of the world’s airspace
Wildlife management teams monitor the grassy areas bordering the runways. They will use horns, loud noises, pyrotechnics, gas cannon, and even speakers imitating the distress call of different species to release birds. If all else fails, Nielsen says crews can use firearms to keep birds away from plane engines.
“Everybody thinks the best way is to go out there with a shotgun or a pistol … it’s a last resort. We will do it, but there are definitely better ways,” he says.
Lost property
In 2022, more than 4,000 pieces of lost property were returned to their owners, and around 3,000 unclaimed items were auctioned off, which the airport does every year to raise money for charity.
Most of the lost property is illegally owned – stray toothbrushes and toiletries left behind in bathrooms, duty free alcohol, laptops and jewellery. But special edition Beatles records, a circular saw, a hedge trimmer and a sun lounger were among the most impressive items auctioned last year.
Katrina Lee is in charge of lost property in her role as airport service center manager.
“There are some more colorful items that we find … personal pleasure items,” says Lee. “We had one bag that was completely full of that kind of stuff, and the woman who called it … she had no doubts about calling.
“[When] They are what float your boat, you want them back.”
Lee jokes that with such discoveries, the team is careful to wear protective gear: “They open it and decide if this is a glove bag or not.”
Sniffing out crime
While the TV show Border Security may spotlight border force officers, the Australian federal police have a significant task of overseeing law enforcement at the airport.
The most visible arm of the AFP at the airport is its team of dogs that can sniff out drugs and explosives. However, enforcement is at the fore against organized crime due to their evolution in detecting cash and digital contraband.
“They’re very aggressive, they can find anything from a phone to a microwave, which is tiny,” says Sen Const Jade Wall. She says cryptocurrency, child abuse material, money laundering and terrorist planning data are the main concerns for smuggled hard drives and data cards, which the trained dogs can detect even deep in luggage.
However, most of the threats are caused by passenger transport.
In fact, inside the AFP headquarters at the airport, there is a mock airplane cabin where officers can practice arresting unruly passengers in their seats. It is equipped with a business class section, too.
“I can tell you, some of them come from business class, they certainly do,” says Det Supt Morgen Blunden, the AFP’s airport police chief.
“Alcohol, certainly, if it’s not the main cause or the only cause, it makes a situation that could have been solved otherwise an incident much worse.”
If travelers resist arrest, tasers can be deployed. While most will be familiar with tasers being used from a distance to fire pits that send an electrical current through the central nervous system, the Guardian understands that the devices can also be inserted into a muscle at a shorter range.
Although officers at the airport carry a standard Glock handgun, some are trained to use larger rifles, such as the Daniels Defense MK 18. Officers must constantly train and retrain to use them.
A major reason for the highly visible short barreled rifles is deterrence against terrorist activity.
“The more we can market the resources we have, hopefully the message will get out that I won’t do anything at the airport,” Blunden said.
The airport also has plenty of desk-bound officers, including an intelligence team tasked with identifying and preventing so-called “trusted insiders”: airline employees who use their access to aid organized crime.
Police maintain a presence even during the curfew periods. “It doesn’t stop completely,” Blunden said. “It’s a huge job.”
