Usually, at Miami International Airport when you take a ride share to the airport to get executive service, you get dropped off at the curbside with your bags placed near the terminal door. But next Monday, that is going to change.
It is expected to be a record setting day for passengers leaving out of MIA—30 thousand more passengers leaving than normal.
“You’re talking about 90 thousand passengers just departing MIA that day," MIA Spokesperson Greg Chin told NBC 6.
"In addition to the arriving passengers, it's going to be a busy day for us and that’s why we are doing the ride app relocation to the rental car center."
The signs will be up at the rental car center directing Uber and Lyft drivers where to go. Then passengers will need to walk through the rental car terminal, board the train, and after exiting, walk to their check in counter.
“The people mover has capacity to handle what we expect so we don’t see a problem with that,” Chin said.
However, Uber Alan Joseph doesn’t think his passengers will be happy the drop off spot. “Yes, well its more time for them,” he said.
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MIA’s plan is to help visitors get to their flight on time and keep them out of traffic from football fans and cruise line passengers converging on the airport.
“Instead of coming to the lower level for departures they will bill be relocated to the rental care center and that’s to de-congest the upper drive which is very busy,” Chin told us.
The airport has been making test runs to see if the plan can work and feels this is the best way to go. Uber driver Joseph is skeptical. “Its going to be chaos," he said.
"Just to getting into the car rental center is crazy with no traffic. Can you imagine with traffic?"
MIA is on stand by and does have a backup plan if they need to get busses to start moving passengers. We timed this out today, and the walk and train ride when you add it all is about 15 minutes.
MIA is asking visitors to leave their hotels 4 hours before their flights just to make sure their get here to the airport in time. Taxi’s are not affected by this change for Monday and can go directly to the terminal.
