Landed at Sharjah — what happens next

Landing is the easy part. Between the aircraft door and the forecourt there is passport control, baggage and customs, and how long that takes depends entirely on how many other aircraft landed at the same time. The useful thing to know in advance is the order it happens in, and the two or three points where a few seconds of preparation saves a long wait.

The sequence

Off the aircraft and along to passport control. One terminal, one direction of travel, no decisions to make.

Passport control. There are automated gates as well as staffed desks. Who may use the automated ones depends on your passport and your status here rather than on which airline you flew, and the gate itself will tell you within a moment. Being turned back to the staffed queue is routine, not a problem.

Have the documents out before you reach the front. Passport open, any entry permit or residency card in hand, and the address you are staying at written down somewhere you can read without unlocking anything.

Baggage reclaim, and then customs, which for most arrivals is a walk through rather than a stop.

The arrivals hall, and the doors to the forecourt.

If you are connecting rather than arriving

Not everyone walking off an aircraft here is staying. A connection is a different journey through the same building, and the thing that decides it is whether your two flights are on one booking or two.

On one booking, your bags are normally checked through and you stay inside the airport. Follow the transfer signage rather than the exit, and the next thing you need is the departures board, not passport control.

On two separate bookings — which is common when a cheap fare is paired with something else — you are treated as an arriving passenger and then as a departing one. That means clearing passport control, collecting your bags, leaving, and checking in again from the public side. It takes far longer than people allow for, it requires whatever permission to enter the country you would need as a visitor, and it is the arrangement in which a delay on the first flight is nobody’s problem but yours.

Work out which you are on before you land, not at the transfer desk.

If you need help getting through

The airport provides assistance staff for passengers who need it — reduced mobility, unaccompanied older travellers, families who need a hand. This is arranged through your airline before you fly, not requested on arrival, and that is the part people get wrong: the request has to exist in the booking for anyone to be waiting.

If it was not arranged and you need help anyway, ask at the first staffed point you reach rather than pressing on and hoping.

If something has gone wrong with your luggage

Report it before you leave the baggage hall. The handling desk is inside it, and a report filed on the spot is a different animal from an email sent the next day. You will be given a reference; photograph it.

Photograph the bag tag and your boarding pass if you have not already. They are what the reference is checked against.

Do not leave the airport expecting to sort it out remotely. Whatever the outcome, the process starts here.

If your bags arrived but you cannot take them with you, be aware that no luggage storage appears in the airport’s own list of services — storing bags at Sharjah Airport explains what people do instead.

What is immediately outside

The ground transport is all reached by walking out of the arrivals hall. There is no shuttle between buildings and no second terminal to reach.

The taxi rank, running around the clock, with the fare on the meter plus an airport surcharge — how taxis work here.

The coaches, from the same forecourt, on a published timetable to the neighbouring emirates — buses and coaches, and the last departure of the day is the thing to have checked before you landed.

The car hire desks, in the arrivals hall itself and staffed around the clock — renting a car, and read the pick-up address on your confirmation before you queue at a desk that may not be the right one.

Anyone who pre-booked a car will be met inside the hall with a name board.

Getting out of Sharjah Airport compares those properly, including which one suits a late landing.

Two things worth doing before you leave the building

Connect. Roaming may or may not wake up on its own here, and the terminal has wi-fi — services in the terminal covers where the practical things are, including currency exchange and prayer rooms.

Check the last coach if you were counting on it. It is one look at the timetable, and it decides whether the next part of your journey costs what you expected.

Where to next

Live arrivals if you are the one waiting rather than the one who landed. Services in the terminal for wi-fi, money and everything else inside the building. Getting out of Sharjah Airport for the journey after it.