Virgin Australia connecting with Etihad through Sydney - is this transfer time possible?

Question

I have a concern regarding Etihad airline flight I booked for the whole family (4 people) a few weeks ago and I booked through a travel agent.

I had a booking from Melbourne to Cairo a few weeks ago for the period from 20/03/2020 to 01/05/2020 and I planned to arrive to Cairo at 5:10am so I can catch a domestic flight to another city in Egypt.

Then Etihad changed the flight and replaced it with another one on the same day but the arrival time did not suit my domestic flight in Egypt. So I had to change onto another flight going from Melbourne to Sydney to Abu Dhabi to Cairo so it can arrive at 5:10 am (to keep my domestic flights in Egypt)

However I then realised that the connection time in Sydney is around 1:30 hours andI have a family with 2 kids, and I have a real concern that moving from domestic airport to Sydney International airport and passing through the immigration and security within just 90 minutes is just an impossible connection time.

I tried to call to change flights but they said it will cost 1400 AUD which looked for me too expensive. I tried to get some peace of mind by asking Etihad whether this connection seems realistic or not and they keep saying forma

Answer 1

You're probably fine. Going from domestic to international, you don't need to recheck your bags. On arrival, just head to gate 46 for the Virgin transfer bus. In the international terminal, security & immigration at Sydney are usually quite efficient now that most passengers can use the autogates, I've averaged <10 min combined on my last half a dozen flights.

Also, if Etihad/Virgin sold you this itinerary as a single.ticket, they will take responsibility and put you.on the next flight if you miss the connection. However, if you have a separate connecting flight from Cairo, that's no longer their responsibility.

Finally, the connection in the other direction is tighter because arrival immigration is slower (although autogates help here too), you need to collect bags, take them through Customs and then check them in again. However, there are also very frequent SYD-MEL flights, so missing one is no big deal.