Odyssey In A Bad Organized Airport

Odyssey in a bad organized airport
…or how I lost almost my connection flight. You know the name doesn’t make a good person…the same happens in the real tourist world. Miami in Florida sounds great as a City itself and a tourist pearl in the Golf of Mexico and the Caribbean. I think
Miami has from both sides something and I do not know if Miami is more a Latin City
or an American City. Beautiful beaches colorful and friendly people the perfect climate…but when I just think about its airport I prefer to go around, avoid that
City.

You can say what you want but the infrastructure of his airport stinks; sorry about
that but this is the way how I feel about his airport. The other day I had a
connection flight to the beautiful City of Santo Domingo and I had two hours to catch the flight…but I only can tell you that I almost missed the flight. I just arrived when everyone had already boarded.

Let me tell you about the odyssey: I arrived with American Airlines at station 2. I
walked to the sky-train to passport control. Entered the train and headed for station 3 where the passport control or immigration control is located. I thought coming out the train at station 3 it is easy to reach immigration. But I was completely wrong.

When I left the train I had to walk quite a distance to the immigration. I had just arrived at the immigration area and the problem started.I looked at my watch and I saw that it had past only 25 minutes since my arrival at the airport.

So I was confident that I will go through everything on time. When I arrived at the area there were only a few counters open because it was still early in the morning. And suddenly there were more and more officials to occupy the empty places and as I was standing in the furthest left lane it was easy for me to switch over to the new lane where nobody was. And I thought, “Anton this time you are lucky and within a few minutes you will be on your way to the gate.”

Tip to my readers: When arriving to the immigration area it is good to go as much as
possible to the left counters which are 29 to 35 as these are in the left corner the
arriving passengers do not see these counters in the first moment because they are
hidden behind a wall. These counters have saved me lots of time sometimes.

But you’ll never imagine how wrong I was. Waiting for the luggage and get it through
custom and leave the luggage at the connection flight counter. Go up to the second
floor through security check. And there the nightmare started. When coming out of
custom you are almost near the street. So when you go to the second floor you are in
the departure area for all passengers to every destiny. You can imagine how many
people are going through security check. It took mi many minutes -almost 30 minutes
to be true- and then you have to go to the gate.



But please make sure that you already know where you have to go after security check
otherwise you will lose valid minutes. After security check I started to walk but I
noticed that the gate was not in that part of the terminal and that I had to go by
train to the next terminal (D) where my plane was leaving. Go up to the train enter
the next arriving train and drive to terminal D, going out of the train and start to
walk because time was passing by. I only can tell you I arrived at Miami airport at
about 10:30 local time and I got to the gate for Santo Domingo at 12:15 and the plane were supposed to leave at 12:30. I was sweating like never before but finally I arrived at the gate and took my seat and relaxed.

A good advice, never take too much hand bag with you. When you like to go to Santo
Domingo and you arrive e.g. from Mexico City you’ll have to walk between security
check, sky train and departure gate very fast otherwise you might lose your flight.

But besides all the hassle it is worth to go to Santo Domingo you will forget all the trouble when you get to Santo Domingo that’s for sure. Have a nice trip in your next get away from home where it might be awful cold.

Anton Winkler likes to write about different subjects. For more information go to his website antonwinkler.com