Miami Airport

[lilyjosh]

We will be flying into Miami with Virgin in May. We will then be making a connecting flight with American Airlines. I am concerned about the short connection time.

Can any of you who have flown into Miami let me know how long it took to clear immigration. We don't need to worry about our luggage so I think it will be immigration that will hold us up.

 

[vernon]

Have you thought about flying into/out of Miami and driving up? It will take you about 3-4 hours to drive to Orlando. With all the hassle of connecting flights particularly if you miss them, it's a much simpler option, also usually flights into/out of Miami are much cheaper. If there are 3 or 4 of you travelling, the flight savings might pay for your car hire for the holiday

It's impossible to give a decent guess on time to clear customs with these new checks, particularly at a busy airport like Miami. If you land behind a couple of other large jets that have lots of non US citizens coming in that need fingerprint scans done, you could face a LONG wait, if you're first down and your flight is mostly Americans you could clear in 15-20 minutes.

 

[natalielongstaff]

how short is your connecting time......i flew out of miami and the place was a zoo !!
they scanned baggage loads of times and made very thorough security checks everywhere

 

[lilyjosh]

The connection time is 2.5 hours. Our travel plans are a bit complicated. My husband and I will already be in Miami and our children are flying out to join us (using Virgin's Kids Flying Solo service). We will be picking them up at the airport and then we all fly to Orlando. They won't have any luggage with them.

We had thought about driving up but the children will have been up since the crack of dawn to get to LHR, they will already have had a 9 hour flight and both suffer really badly from travel sickness in the car whereas they love flying. I don't think I could face a four hour drive with 2 v. v. tired children throwing up every 10 minutes!

 

[kacale]

Hi,

We just got back from Florida. Flew Virgin into Miami and then drove to Vero Beach. It took us 35 minutes to get through Immigration which we felt was a result. We were in our hire car one hour and 20 mins after we landed.

Karen

 

[UKPhil]

We flew to Miami a couple of years ago and found immigration there SLOW - much slower than Orlando International, and that was at a quiet time of year (November) but that was the only time we've been there so I don't know if our experience was typical. In total I recon it took us about 2 hours to clear the airport, including immigration, customs and baggage reclaim. Having said that, it is a pretty compact airport so getting from one gate to another won't take too long.

 

[lilyjosh]

Thanks for the replies - I feel a bit more hopeful now. It will be great if our experience is the same as yours Karen.