Some years ago, we bought a week's timeshare in a South
African resort for the magnificent sum of $376. I won't say where it is, but we did
visit it and whilst it was pretty downmarket and somewhat seedy, it has given
us the opportunity to exchange our week with some more upmarket places. We've
been to India, Zimbabwe and Mexico and this time, we obtained a week in Aruba,
a Dutch colony island in the Caribbean.
Getting there, however, was hardly fun. The cheapest way to
fly was with American Airlines via Miami. The problem with connecting flights
in the US is the time needed to go through the rigmarole of immigration even if
you are not staying in that country. On top of that, your bags are not checked
through to your final destination, so you have to pick them up, go through
customs and re-check them in again,
Originally there was a two hour time gap between the
landing time in Miami and the take off time to Aruba, but this was cut by 20
minutes when they re-scheduled the flight to Aruba. In theory, this should have
still given us enough time to clear all the immigration hurdles. However, the
plane arrived an hour late and despite having priority through immigration, due
to Sonia requiring a wheelchair as she had recently had an operation on both
her knees, it was to no avail. We missed our connection.
So we were traipsed off to the American Airlines
re-connection desks (and there were many) to get another reservation. Of
course, there were no more flights to Aruba until the next day, so that meant
one day less in Aruba. After quite a long time, we finally got
re-booked but were told that we couldn't get a boarding pass until the next
day. "Come two hours before the flight for this" we were told. All
this without turning a hair - there were about 100 people waiting to be
re-booked - this is obviously a frequent occurrence so it is why they have a
special ticketing department to do this. I asked if they would put us up at a
hotel. "Of course," they said,
"and we will give you vouchers for dinner and breakfast".
"That's mighty civilised of them" I thought, but the vouchers were
for $12 each for dinner and $7 each for breakfast. Hardly enough for an appetizer at the hotel
restaurant, so we used out breakfast voucher to defray the cost of the dinner,
thinking that we might snatch a bit of grub on the plane. Some hopes!
Well, at least, we had a free hotel room. All re-booked
people were put up at the Miami International Airport Hotel and the room
allocated to us was a tiny claustrophobic room with no windows! We were told
that "that's all American Airlines would pay for". I think this hotel
must have been built as a kind of purgatory location for re-bookers before
deciding whether they are going to paradise or not! Well, the hotel front desk
took pity on Sonia's knees and upgraded us to a bigger room.
In fairness to the hotel, we
slept in a very comfortable bed with a good bathroom and the staff were very
helpful. But it's quite clear that American Airlines are still in a state of
poor financial health.
We decided to check in three
hours before the flight and luckily we did. There was such chaos at the check
in but we did manage to get checked in although it took the best part of an
hour.
So the verdict on Miami airport is Avoid. That is unless you plan to make an overnight stop there
because it's too risky fly onwards with a tight schedule. We could have gone to
Aruba with KLM via Amsterdam, but it was more expensive. However, by the time
we added up our extra costs on this trip we might just as well have gone with
them.
We are not looking forward to our return flight!
Anyway, I am writing this on the beach in Aruba now and
will write again with my impressions of Aruba in the next few days.
