Travel to St. Kitts from New Orleans

I flew through MIA on a couple flights from the Caribbean in June 2012 and Customs was an absolute cluster frick. Hopefully someone else on the board has more recent intel for you.

Just went to Barbados in November, and had the layover in Miami. 80 minutes is not enough. We had a 2 hour layover, and we we're lucky to make our connecting flight.

Our flight was a hour late leaving Barbados. Even if it hadn't been we would have cut it close. Customs was backed up to hell. Probably will take around a hour to get through.

We got lucky. I was "randomly" choosen for a special screening which I was pissed about at first. But instead of standing in the second line you have to go through that's another 30 minutes, we got to a TSA agent right away and we're through in 10.

Then you have to go back through baggage check. Got lucky here again. We bought alcohol at the Barbados airport, and they put them in the TSA bag that allows you to take it through baggage claim even though it's over the liquid limit with carry ons. TSA opens the bag and puts it through a certain machine. Well, the bottle I bought had a thick bottom which is technically not allowed. In fact, the TSA agent told me normally they would have to screen me again and throw away the bottle. They did neither and let me go right on through because I was being a decent human being and not arguing.

At this point, we had 20 minutes to get to our flight. We flew American Airlines. Well, the walk from baggage claim to our gate was over a mile long and at the very end of a different gate than we arrived. So we ran, even though not expecting to make it. Well, one of the airport workers on a cart saw us, asked us if we were running late. He picked us up, took us to the sky lounge elevator that took us directly to the tram that I guess is the private tram for the sky lounge?

Get off it, run, and we make it a minute late. They were closing off the door as we arrived but let us on. Another couple on our first flight Fromm barbados who were also going to Houston did not make the flight.

So tl;dr, in my experience, an 80 minute lay over is not enough.

I've done the connection to St. Kitts. No big deal.

Where are you staying? We rented a villa overlooking Nevis.

Do at least one day trip to Nevis. It's awesome. Eat at Reggae Beach Bar on Friday night. On Wednesday there's a lobster feast at the town near the fort. It's called Sprat Net.

Also eat at Salt Plage and The Pavilion at Cristoph Harbor.

Explore, explore, explore! It's an awesome clean island and the native people are very friendly. The beaches aren't the best but everything else makes up for it.

Enjoy!!!

Thanks. It looks more like a 1 hr 37 min connection arrival to departure.

I agree MIA is pretty bad. 80 mins, however, sounds ok. But as others have mentioned, it could go wrong. And at MIA, that is not a long shot. The good thing is that if you book all on 1 ticket, the airline will get you to your destination, even if that means they put you up in a hotel for a night. You do lose a vacation day but there is that little bit of peace of mind.

Idk where you book your flight tickets, but if the prices are the same (they should be), book directly through aa.com or whichever airline instead of going through an OTA. It will be MUCH easier to deal with if something were to go wrong.