A new study has investigated the world’s most stressful airports and it’s absolutely no surprise to me that Sydney features on the list. If you haven’t had a breakdown trying to find a spare seat in the domestic terminal’s foodcourt, I absolutely commend you.
Travelling? Inherently stressful. Working at an airport or on a plane? Surely very stressful.
Operating on four hours of sleep and getting stuck in a seemingly-endless passport queue while the minutes tick down towards your departure time? Truly, heinously stressful.
And as it turns out, four Aussie airports do not pass the chill test.
Holiday rental company Hawaiian Islands conducted the study, putting in the hard yards and analysing 1,500 Google Reviews for more than 500 different airports.
Per 9Honey, the company sussed what percentage of reviews indicated stress for each of those airports.
The study then broke down the airports via region.
It turns out on average, the region of Oceania and Southeast Asia actually has less stressful airports than the rest of the world. Good job team.
But within that region, Aussie airports made up almost half of the top ten most stressful. Plus the area did still include some of the most stressful airports in the world.
Given how many Aussie airports featured on the list, it seems we’re definitely letting down the rest of the regional team.
Clocking in at second most stressful was Sydney, where 58.98 per cent of the reviews showed stress.
It was just a couple of percentage points behind the most stressful city, Tan Son Nhat International in Vietnam at 60.13 per cent.
Melbourne came fourth with 55.40 per cent, Perth was fifth at 55.30 per cent and Brissy was tenth at 48.53 per cent.
This once again confirms my theory that Adelaide Airport is the best in the country.
To give you a wee bit of comparison, the world’s most stressful airport was in Manchester, England.
82.5 per cent of the Google Reviews indicated stress. Having been to Manchester Airport myself, I can confirm it is simply the worst.
To be perfectly honest, I’m not surprised at all to see Sydney Airport up there with the big dogs of airport stress. It was crowned ninth most delayed airport in the world back in July 2022 — surely no surprise to literally anyone who’s tried to fly out of it in the last year.
According to FlightAware data analysed by CNN, 34.2 per cent of Sydney flights were delayed between May 26 and July 19.
And hey, we’ve seen the truly cursed pics of folks queued up outside the airport more than once this year.
All that being said, I still maintain the Sydney Airport Macca’s iced coffee is second to none. Plus everyone working there has always been very helpful when my baggage is inevitably overweight and for that, I am eternally grateful.
I will absolutely be doing a tour of the country’s airports and conducting my own stress test though. Perth, be wary.
