Frequent Miami Airport delays and mishaps?

:(Is Miami airport know for flight delays? After landing in Miamirecently, we were kept away from the gate for over an hour because there was noplace to ‘park’ the plane. When we did deplane, it took 1 hour to retrieve mybags because they put 7 flights on the same baggage carousel.

10 days later, my flight was delayed 5 hours after a seriesof mistakes all due to American Airlines errors. A few years back I had aflight completely cancelled at the gate after checking in on time. Again, American Airlines.

Is it just my bad luck or do things like this happen at MIAon a regular basis?

:(Is Miami airport know for flight delays? After landing in Miamirecently, we were kept away from the gate for over an hour because there was noplace to ‘park’ the plane. When we did deplane, it took 1 hour to retrieve mybags because they put 7 flights on the same baggage carousel.

10 days later, my flight was delayed 5 hours after a seriesof mistakes all due to American Airlines errors. A few years back I had aflight completely cancelled at the gate after checking in on time. Again, American Airlines.

Is it just my bad luck or do things like this happen at MIAon a regular basis?

 

I don't think MIA is any better or worse than most other US airports, and it's certainly better than any of the NY area airports as far as delays are concerned.

I travel in and out of MIA on business (and for cruises) on a regular basis, and I've only had one flight were we landed and were parked out in the holding area for about 15 minutes because there was no gate available.

MIA's baggage handling is pretty slow though. But unless I'm headed there for a cruise, I'm always a carry-on anyway.

I fly frequently and MIA is my home airport. The majority of time my flights are on time. My delayed flights over the last year have all been on American Airlines but usually on my return flights.

Most MIA delays are due to weather. Usually in the summer time with thunderstorms. The other issues you mentioned are issues with AA. 1. In the last year or so they "banked" their hub here. Meaning a lot of flights come in and leave around the same time. This has created a mess with the amount of gates as AA continues to grow in MIA but there are only so many gates to go around. Plenty of runways, but not enough gates.

The baggage issue is an MIA issue, again mainly with AA. Being such a large hub from AA many of the bags have to get on connecting flights, those bags are given priority before your bags are sent down to you at baggage claim.

But other than issues with AA flight planning, MIA is not a delayed prone airport like say an LGA, JFK or SFO is. The weather delays are usually never long, no more than an hour or so, unless there is a large tropical system. Every few years the airport will be shut down for a near by hurricane.

We fly to/from Miami annually and overall have had no issues or certainly nothing more then you would find anywhere else.

Keith