ABTN is privileged to receive from friends all over the world stories and information worthy of finding its way into print. The following comes from a distinguished US journalist who also spent a considerable time as an airline PR man, one of a declining breed of communicators who really know their stuff and are always prepared to help.
He reports on a recent trip to London.
"American Airlines and the supporting infrastructure are clearly long term casualties of 9/11.
The Miami International Airport is a relic which no amount of plaster and glass is going to improve. It is typical of the structure conceived during the golden age of air travel when the customer was king and time was flexible - a circle with exits sprouting around the perimeter -- which, in today's climate, is guaranteed to fluster, frustrate, flummox and enflame the international passenger. The sense of Miami's antiquity is especially heightened by an arrival from Tampa International, which this year was rated 'America's favourite airport' by JD Power and Associates. The difference is staggering and highlights MIA's dark, crowded, dirty and poorly serviced passenger facilities.
Fortunately, the flight from MIA to LHR did not involve a gate change and thus the passenger was spared the problems associated with having to move around MIA. perimeter. Unfortunately, any passenger wishing to eat something other than candy bars or cardboard confections will have to leave the terminal, and then go through the hassles of re-entry, since E Concourse offers little other than a Samuel Adams beer outlet and a duty free shop. The concourse does, however, offer entertainment; its construction includes some sort of shielding which renders reception of mobile phone nearly impossible. One is treated to the sight of crowds of milling passengers, devices plastered to their ears, singing a cappella, 'can you hear me now?'
The flight itself on American's Boeing 777 was a disappointment. The much-vaunted 'extra seat room' must have been somewhere else since it wasn't evidenced on Flight Number 56 where this six-footer found little for AA to boast about. Nor was the cabin service worthy of compliment. There was a meal, and quite nice it was, too, but dinner didn't reach the rear seats until nearly 2200 hrs, by which time most passengers wanted to be asleep. Including this one, but without much success. Just as he was dropping off the duty free cart arrived and there ensued much groping of his upper thigh by a male flight attendant, ostensibly searching the cart for the desired item, and arguments with the female flight attendant opposite as to whether change should or could be given in dollars, pounds or euros and, if so, how much and when. For the first time in over 40 years of commercial air travel, there was to be no ongoing coffee service and after ensuring that their boisterous duty free vending deprived him of sleep, the flight attendants rudely informed our writer that coffee would be served at breakfast and sent him back to his seat. Indeed, the one word which might best describe the cabin staff of AA56 is 'surly' and so the arrival and exit from LHR was welcomed and conducted with little trouble.
The return flight in a bulkhead seat was a welcome contrast. Pleasant cabin attendants dispensed copious beverages and the flight crew made every effort to make up for a 30-minute delay caused by an undefined 'maintenance issue' before departure from LHR, only to be undone by having to wait on the ground at Miami International until a gate became available. Alas, arrival at MIA was, if anything, worse than departure. Travel on a US passport should have eased entry into the country but lines to control points were nonexistent, there being a great hole in the floor through which passed an escalator, the whole surrounded by walls behind which some demented architect had placed the bulk of the immigration checkpoints, necessitating the presence of an agent to direct a great blob of human traffic beyond the walls to fan out to the hitherto unseen points. Slow and tedious was a passenger's passage through the process, notwithstanding his US citizenship, with agents yelling back and forth at each other who's next to get a break or when quitting time really is. International passengers are unlikely to fare any better. But after that the fun really begins.
Passage from the international arrival point at Concourse E to the domestic departure point at Concourse B demonstrates just how antiquated the MIA terminal truly is with bemused and bewildered baggage-laden passengers stumbling down the narrow corridor in a profusion of directions, trying to make sense of the signage. Between the passport control point and the entry onto one's connecting flight to TPA, a passenger is challenged, in accents barely resembling any known English dialect, to produce either identification, boarding pass or both, no less than six times. Stark images of an earlier time when leather-coated Trilby-hatted state police agents demanded "papers!!" come unbidden to mind and one becomes convinced that this is less an attempt to ensure the safety and security of the aviation system than it is a make-work project for the newly-minted citizens of Miami. Food courts, where they exist at all, offer typical American sludge at inflated prices and one's mobile struggles mightily to make a connection. Final arrival back at TPA is like unto emergence into The Promised Land.
All in all, anyone wishing to enter the US through Florida would be well advised to do so through an airport other than MIA, a clone of that other architectural disaster, DFW. Orlando (MCO) and Tampa are much better choices and airlines offering international service to those destinations are preferable to any flying to and from MIA".
(The editor would also like to add once again that our reporter was a US citizen, born and bred, and of good standing. What happens to Brits and other aliens we are not sure as Miami has not been tried. However Newark New York, when last used, was very good, and hopefully remains that way for reasons to be noted in a future edition, the same for the BA terminal at Kennedy. Seattle as an entry point requires patience!)