Arrived last night at the 7pm rush on an international arrival on an Eagle flight that did not have pre-clearance.
The pilot announced we would arrive D60P and take a bus to customs. I'm EXP but never arrived on Eagle internationally before at MIA.
I thought great. The bus will take us to the customs area in the middle. That's the way it works almost everywhere in the world, right? You suffer through the bus but it takes you right to the hall and you get to avoid the walk.
Wrong.
We had to wait for everyone, including wheelchairs, to get on the bus.
It literally drove us for 1 minute from the D60 area to right where the outside gates stop around D55.
I guess there is no secure corridor to let us access the international arrivals area and here I thought we would at least get the advantage of being driven to the customs/immigration hall.
We then walked all the way to the customs area. No one broke off for SkyLink. I'm not sure why but we walked anyway.
At immigration I would say the middle GE kiosks had about 3/6 working. They were directing people to regular lines instead. I noticed one whole wall of GE machines at the far side (I guess coming from the low D's maybe) were all switched off.
After the recheck we went to the PreCheck line for connecting flights. It actually took longer than the regular lines. PreCheck had one line open and it was backed up as they had one staff member having people put their bags in trays for the new system. Why they had so many lines open for non-PreCheck and just one for PreCheck I don't know. This also caused big delays if you bag was pulled for secondary.
I guess getting off the aircraft at D60P and clearing security about 55 minutes later is pretty good for MIA but to me it was still really inefficient.