Miami Airport

I went through here yesterday and it was a nightmare. 3 hrs to get through immigration and none of the immigration area staff were interested in connecting flights. They tell you the airline should give you an orange pass and if you do not have one they cannot help you. When you finally get through to baggage handlers have taken the baggage off and it's all over the floor. Go to connecting flights they just rip of your bag tags and tell you to go outside and to the left. When you do that you will be greeted with AA rebooking. The person manning the queue will pay no attention to your ticket that he inspects and will direct you to stand in an economy class rebooking queue when you have a first class ticket. Wait another hour and you will be greeted by an AA agent that will ask why you missed you connection and then blame you and make a big deal about rebooking. After you have been told how grateful you should be to them for rebooking you you will be sent on your way to find a hotel at your own expense. Do not try and argue that your flight came in late (even if it did) as the agent won't have it. My flight landed 2 minutes late but took another 35 minutes to get on stand because we were waiting for another aircraft to move. The AA agent will firmly tell you the flight was not late because two minutes is not late and the computer will show the time the wheels hit the tarmac not the arrival on stand. Simply put avoid this airport at all costs if you want to remain sane.

Really bad queues staff don't care and are rude. No organisation in airport would not fly from here again.

Travelled through Miami with my father in March 2013. Immigration was dreadful we spent 5 hours trying to get through. Our Virgin flight landed around 5.30pm - we were finally out of the airport at 10.30pm. We finally reached Islamorada on the Keys just after 12 midnight. Customs at Miami is dreadful.

Quite the worst airport I have ever had the misfortune to have to travel through with the longest queues and rudest and least helpful AA check in staff. Avoid transit there at all costs.

It is true that I also had to stay in a long line of people to go through immigration and customs. I was one of the last to go through the immigration and the waiting time was about 15-20 minutes. If you have connecting flights and you have to go through immigrations/customs you need at least 2-3 hours at US airports (my experience). Other than that little waiting I had no trouble at all. Airport is clean and plenty of staff to help people.

Arrived Friday afternoon (June '13) having read awful things about the time spent going through customs. We saw a huge queue which we joined only to be moved to the US Citizen lines then moved again to an even smaller line. We got through in under 30 minutes for which I'm most grateful as we had a 3 hour drive ahead of us.

This is the worst airport experience I've ever had. Arrived from London it took me more than an hour to pass customs. Once I'd passed I needed to take another flight to Cancun with American Airlines. I was travelling business class so when I had to pass security control I had a fast track line. Well the fast track line worked well unfortunately at the end of the line I was pushed together with all other passengers! That means just a long line altogether. Another great experience was the new model of x-ray machine in which you have to pass through. After unpacking all your luggage take off your shoes sweater pullover belt you are in line again. You go trough the x-ray machine and then finally you can get your stuff. Well before this stupid machine there were normal metal detector and there were 4 metal detectors. Now only 2 x-ray machine. So they've just double the line and the time. I'll try to avoid Miami International Airport as much as I can.

Came in on BA flight and found ourselves in a massive herd of people wondering what on earth was going on. After 2 hours being jostled and funnelled we found ourselves at the entrance of the immigration hall only to see a massive queue and a further 2 hour wait. The information was non-existent airport officials not to be seen anywhere. A lot of time was being wasted once we got to the immigrations desks (which because of the financial mess were only staffed 30%) and a significant improvement to the queue could have been made by just a few seconds of greater efficiency at the booths. Complaints after the event have been met by platitudes and a total failure to understand the health and safety implications of the airport's inaction. Told that they'd brought in extra staff (no sign of any) and were handing out bottles of water (we saw none). The general view of my party (2 of whom are over 70) was that this was the worst airport experience. After 40 trips I will never come here again. This is a true shame on America and has done more damage to Miami's reputation than they seem to realise. Complaints have been met by platitudes and it will not be too long before someone takes legal action for the airport's and the US's appalling treatment. A true shame on America.

My husband and I flew into MIA on May 17 2013. Only had 1.5 hours to make our flight to NYC. However because my husband does not yet have his greencard we were taken to the room at immigration and made to wait 2 hours. Ended up missing all flights to NYC that evening and had to stay the night in a hotel. Some officers were nice gently telling people to put away their phones and to follow them etc. but then there were others that were barking orders as if we were in jail. After we filled out the form there was almost nobody on line so we went under the ropes to get to the front. In the process we got yelled at by another officer. This time around we went to a different window. The officer was much nicer but in the end he sent us to wait by the wall to be taken into the room. By this time we were never going to make our flight so I tried calling my travel agent to change the flight. However just as I was explaining the situation an extremely hostile officer told me to get off the phone. He then took us into the room where we waited 2 hours. I could not use my cell phone and there were no public phones. Although the officer that attended to my husband was nice I saw so many being unjustifiably rude. In the end because we couldn't cancel our flight before it departed our tickets were suspended. We ended up having to pay for two new one way tickets just to get home.

Flew into and out of Miami to Cancun (American Airlines). Having used Miami several times in the past I was pleasantly surprised although arriving at 2pm in the middle of the week may have helped. Through immigration in 35mins (I timed it!) with a friendly and communicative agent. Customs done in just a few minutes. Several gripes though - I find the signage for shuttles etc is poor and security is very variable with security staff 'barking' instructions.