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#919142 by oldboy
25 Mar 2016, 11:10
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We stayed the night prior to our flight at the Park Inn, at just £75 we thought it very good value & perfectly adequate for
a one nght stay.

We left the hotel at around 07.00 for our 09.30 VS117 departure, a very short taxi ride to DTCI & we were very soon & effectively processed & in the main terminal. Following a short visit to duty free we were in the Clubhouse where we enjoyed a good breakfast & a couple of glasses of fizz.

Left the Clubhouse on the first call, by the time we got to the gate there was no queue & we were soon taking out seats (1A & 1D) & enjoying a glass of fizz. At this stage all was looking good for an on time departure, however shortly afterwards the Captain came on the PA to announce a delay due to fog & a back up of departing flights, this delay ended up being approx 75 minutes which all though not great the time soon passes as in flight entertainment was available & tea, coffee & of course bubbly was served.

Departure time finally arrived & after sitting in a queue of departing aircraft we were in the air.

Service throughout the flight was good, food was average at best, my wife decided to give up on the steak for future flights as the last 2 or 3 she has tried have not been good.

CC were very good though & made for a good flight.

Much comment has been made here on the A330-300, I must say I was not over impressed, my seat certainly seemed cramped & I missed having an arm rest an arm rest on my right hand side.

This was the first time we had flown in to Miami & I have to say that all the reports I have read on v flyer proved to be very accurate. The walk from the plane to immigration was unbelievably long, we went straight to the passport scanning machines, unfortunately my wife's passport was not accepted so we had to join a queue of many, many people whose passport print out had received a cross, we probably stood in the queue for an hour & a quarter, the whole thing seemed very badly organised, it certainly would have helped if the room had been air conditioned & there was somewhere to purchase cold drinks. One upside was that information gleaned from v flyer meant that we were expecting this frustration at immigration.

Eventually through immigration we were met by the very efficient driver from Miami Limousine who whisked off to Fort Lauderdale for the start of our holiday.

Overall the flight was fine, no sparkle at all but perfectly functional with no complaints.

oldboy
#919145 by Blacky1
25 Mar 2016, 11:45
Not the best by the sounds of it oldboy, I too have decided to call it a day on the steak front ( saying that I didn't have a choice on my last flight which was in Y !! :-D :-D )
Thanks for posting
#919148 by hiljil
25 Mar 2016, 12:23
Thank you for the TR.
A long delay at MIA immigration was just what you needed to round off the delayed departure ! But at least you had some positive things to say about the flight. I am girding up my loins for my arrival at MIA in just over 3 weeks .....
#919156 by marshy11
25 Mar 2016, 14:38
I don't mind the A330 too much, but when you compare it to the more airy cabins, it's a poor comparison.

Thanks for another good TR.
#919159 by Maximus
25 Mar 2016, 15:12
Thanks for the report. We are heading through MIA in 2 weeks andI was hoping the immigration queue situation had improved there but obviously not :-(
#919173 by tomthumb
25 Mar 2016, 18:09
Thanks for the update - shame about the steak - debating if I should go for it in 3 weeks time
#919176 by RyanJW
25 Mar 2016, 18:27
Thanks for the trip report!

It doesn't get any better when you leave as the TSA security check point at F terminal is frankly just as bad. Super super slow so don't cut it fine as last time Aeroflot left around the same time so it was chockablock!
#919181 by TimCrawley
25 Mar 2016, 20:15
Thanks for posting the TR.

Oh no, the beef strikes again .... I very stupidly chose this from the (December still) Upper menu on VS44 on 14/03 and it had the perfect flavour of LIVER rather than beef, not sure how the catering in Las Vegas managed that one but I tend to prefer liver to have the texture of liver and the liver flavoured beef was just too strange for me.

Glad you had a good crew - I had an exceptionally good CC on VS44 on 14/03 (which is normally staffed by tired & grumpy crew on most previous trips).
#919190 by Traveller2
25 Mar 2016, 21:50
We used the kiosks at MCO last November and even though neither of us had the dreaded cross on our printouts, we were still made to queue up to see an immigration officer....who then took our fingerprints again, scanned our eyes again and swiped our passports again!!!By the time we eventually got through, the people from our flight who couldn't use the kiosks were long gone and we were left in an empty immigration hall.
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