Wow,
You can tell cruise season is upon us! Must have been 6 ships in today.
The TSA lines were typical during busy times...proberly the worst at line management I've seen. The delta priority luggage check here is a joke. They should really send a quality control manager to FtLauderdale to re design.
On top of the other issues today, the 1015 flight was delayed till 6 tomorrow morning last time I checked....lots of unhappy cruisers.
Delta does pretty good in FLL during the slow season, but really needs to up their game this time of year...as for TSA, that's another story! Will be interesting on how the upcoming pre check works.
There used to be a time when I preferred using FLL over MIA. Not anymore. After all of the renovations MIA is pretty nice. The Skyclub at MIA is also one of my favorites.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by readywhenyouare
There used to be a time when I preferred using FLL over MIA. Not anymore. After all of the renovations MIA is pretty nice. The Skyclub at MIA is also one of my favorites.
I would have thought PBI was not too bad as an alternative to FLL?
I would have thought PBI was not too bad as an alternative to FLL?
I'm sure it is a good alternative. I guess I should have clarified in my first post that even though my travels were taking me to Miami I used to prefer flying into FLL. Now that the experience at MIA is so much better than it used to be I don't mind flying there instead of FLL.
FLL probably has the best UG ratio among the three airports in the area. PBI this time of year is quite bad that way.
I also noticed today that the no NOS lane got all boarded up and is probably getting ready for the Pre rollout.
That will make it even worse for those that did not get Pre.
MIA is a great airport and even better with the people mover to the rental car facility. I am Gold and get upgraded regularly, especially early morning flights departing MIA.
The other day I saw the Lufthansa 380 land...that is a big bird.
I guessing DL will have to change the bag requirement time. I think they will eventually to change from 30 minutes to 45 minutes. I think they have be there at FLL is 2.5 hrs in advance. DL terminal 2 is getting more extremely overcrowded. I think they have spent more extra time. Doesn't make sense! This is ridiculous!! I'm guess they have get ready to install new inline baggage screening system.
Unfortunately these threads will only continue as things in FLL get worse each season.
The growth in cruise ship berthing capacities in particular - getting up near 6,000 passenger capacity ships in some cases, can mean closing in on 60,000 passenger throughflow at Port Everglades. Up to 30,000 debarkments in one 2.5 hour window from 7:30am through 10am. With a high percentage of those folks heading directly for the airport, with nowhere else to go, FLL looks like a refugee camp during busy weekend mid-mornings through the winter.
Cruiselines have responded by providing transfer services and using MIA and FLL interchangeably for ships from either port - but with MIA busy itself on heavy cruise ship weekends, it's still causing pressure on both airlines, and the airport facilities.
I don't know why there isn't a more cohesive tri-city approach with the cities working together with the cruise lines, and PBI, FLL and MIA airport authorities, to do some forward planning to absorb the huge numbers of people all looking to fly out in a very short window - the number of which are only going to continue to increase each year.
Yikes!! I won't be in FLL anymore. It's getting more extremely overcrowded and the ticket price is too extremely expensive now. I can't go to FLL for a long time. Maybe I will fly somewhere else. Grrrr!! I can't bear watch it!
While I only fly once a month or so, I haven't noticed any heavy loads at FLL, though I do try and avoid weekend mornings. There's never been any significant lines for security when I've been there. Obviously YMMV.
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If you want to try to see the cruise trafficeon any given day that will be go through the FLL port, look at this site as they show the loads of the cruise ships that will be in port. There is usually one day a month that will have a total over of 50,000 people coming and going from cruises.
Most weekend days average 40,000 per day total of people coming and going.
As a travel agent, I use this calendar to help with booking flights and manage the expectations of my client on traffic through FLL.
