Madrid Flights

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Aeropuerto de Madrid-Barajas (Madrid-Barajas Airport): When you arrive in Madrid by plane and you don't want to be lost (or at least you try not to be) or you want to check the time of arrival/departure.

There are 4 Terminals and a shuttle bus that links all of them.

The easiest and fastest way to go from/to the airport to/from the city centre is by metro (line 8) and there are two different stations:
- Aeropuerto T1, T2, T3: It serves Terminals 1, 2 and 3.
- Aeropuerto T4: It seves Terminal 4.

But there are buses too:
- Number 200: Terminals 1, 2, 3 and 4 (to Avenida de América interchange, level -2, platform 18).

From there (Avenida de Anérica), there are many buses and four metro lines: 4, 6, 7 and 9.

So, you have to check which terminal your flight operates from/to.

NOTE: As of 5 November 2.010, there is a new bus service linking the airport and the city centre; check next tip.

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East of the city is Madrid’s busy Barajas Airport - around 13kms (9 miles). It is Spain’s busiest and largest airport. It was opened in 1928 and new runways and terminals were continually added over the years. Today the airport has 4 terminals and services major airlines such as American, British, LAN, Air Europa and Spanair to name just a few. It was voted the Best Airport in 2008 in the Conde Nast Traveller Reader Awards.

Barajas airport's new terminal 4S is very, very large.
It is also very far from anywhere else.

After landing and passing through immigration one must take a special metro shuttle to T4 to collect one's luggage.

The metro shuttle is located down a few flights of stairs.
There is also an escalator and a lift to reach it.
Once there one cannot return upstairs again. The shuttle is free.

It is a high speed metro that travels for a good 4 minutes.
Just how far away is it really I wonder?

It is located 13 km north-east of central Madrid. From Terminal 1,2,3 it is very easy to come to the center of Madrid. Madrid metro is connected with airport and with only 10 minutes of rides and only 2 Euro you will be in the down town.
Madrid Barajas Airport is Spain's busiest airport, handling more than 40 million passengers a year. Madrid airport is a host of many low budget airway companies such as Ryanair, Easyjet, Wizzair..

www.madrid-mad.com

Our arrival in Madrid was after a 3-hour flight to Toronto, followed by a 7-hour wait there before catching a 7-hour overnight flight to Frankfurt and then an almost immediate a 2.5 hour flight to Barajas airport, arriving just before noon at our hotel. We continued onward the next afternoon and did not return to Madrid until 19 days later. At least we had two nights in the city on our return trip, so made use of the extra time to do a bit of exploring.

On the initial booking of our flights from Canada to Spain, we had ended our flight reservations in Madrid. I was thinking that I would pick up a rental car there and enjoy a scenic countryside drive to the coast somewhere in the Malaga area, similar to what we had done in Lisbon, Portugal five years earlier. However, when my wife's sister booked her flight from England to meet us way up the coast in Alicante, I realized that too much driving would be involved.

After debating whether to take a train, bus or flight from Madrid to Alicante, I came to the conclusion that a flight would likely be the simplest and fastest way to go, given our lack of Spanish while trying to figure out all the details of the other modes of travel. Surfing the internet, I managed to find the "EDreams" website based in London - an outfit that offers cheap tickets for sale. They were fast and efficient, charging me 32 Euros (including cancellation insurance) for the booking fee and securing us two round-trip seats on Spanair for another 98 Euros. The total price of 65 Euros each for round-trip tickets seemed quite reasonable by Canadian standards!

The flights themselves were on-time and smooth with very good service on the McDonnell Douglas MD-87 aircraft servicing this route, with a flight time of 1-hour. I was really pleased that we decided to fly to the coast - had some great views coming into Alicante as well.

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The Barajas airport is located 12km away from the city center. There are 4 terminals. The 4th terminal is a beautiful new terminal, a bit further from the others and usually the airlines I use go there. There is a free shuttle bus between T1,T2,T3 and T4.

How to go to the center:
-taxi. I never used one but it’s useful when there is no bus or metro. The cost is about 25 euros to Puerta del Sol.
-bus. There is bus that takes you to Colon square for 2,50 euros 4:30am-02:00am but also local buses that go to Avenida de America bus/metro station.
-metro. The best and cheapest option. 6:00am-01:30am. Take the pink line(N.9) and change at Mar De Cristan for the brown line(N.4) or at Nuevos Ministerios for the blue (N.10) or grey(N.6) line.

The metro ticket costs 1 euro but the best options is the metrocard that costs 6.70euro for 10 trips (metro or bus). Have in mind that going/coming to/from you have to validate an extra ticket that also costs 1euro. I took the metrocard from the machines and the menu is in English so there was no problem using the touch screen. I always travel light so I don’t have any problem with escalators, many changing lines but if you have a lot of things maybe it’s not the ideal transfer for you.

If you use Iberia for oversea flights go to the “Madrid Amigo” desk (T4). Usually, because they offer free transfer/accommodation for those who have to wait the night there for their transit flight.

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Arriving in Madrid from the US, I was alerted to the fact that the time that I thought we landed was off by an hour when I saw the large clocks (photo 5) that there are everywhere in the terminal. There were stairs (escalators), trains and elevators to get us to immigration where they stamped our passports and took the top half of the form we had to fill out. Then we went through security again to get to our next flight.

On the way to that flight, we went down two flights of stairs to a bus, the bus took us to the plane, and we had to walk up a flight of stairs to the plane.

On the way back to the states, we came into Madrid from Venice the day before we were to fly out. Photo 4 is the terminal from the plane as we landed. The baggage collection places (photo 2) were in the new T4 terminal where we arrived and we retrieved our luggage without a problem.

The next day when we flew out, we had to be sure that we told the taxi driver which terminal to take us to, as they are fairly widely separated.

After we found the AA airline counter, we got into a long line of people waiting to check in. I sat on my cane and we waited. Eventually one of the line herder ladies came and asked me if I wanted a wheelchair. I said I thought I'd be OK. So she went away. A little later, she came and asked again, so I said I would surrender to the wheelchair.

The wheelchair lady took us to the business class check-in. First we had our passports validated that we had had our baggage for "years, months, days" and we said years, and that we packed them ourselves etc. She put a sticker on the passport. Then we actually checked the bags and got our boarding passes. The wheelchair lady then walked us very fast up elevators and down corridors (where yesterday we just rode the people-mover photo 3) to security. She horned us into the front of the security line.

Here for the second time at Madrid, when my grandson went through the magnetic doorway, it beeped. The procedure seems to be that they ask me how old he is (in Spanish so it takes me awhile to figure out what the question is and then they look at his passport to verify), and then ask my permission to search him. Then they pat him down - they don't use the wand. I don't know why he sets the detector off here as he has not done so anywhere else even wearing the same clothing.

I walked through the doorway and was fine. We did not have to take off our shoes anywhere in Europe. We repackaged ourselves and the lady, walking briskly took us to the gate and said she would be back in 40 minutes. It was now 9:45. They pulled us out of the regular line at 9:00, and with priority handling, it had taken us 45 minutes to get to the gate. So I was glad that I had opted for the wheelchair.

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When coming to Madrid by plane, Barajas is where you're most likely landing. This is the biggest airport in Madrid and Spain when it comes to traffic and a lot of airlines fly to and from here: Air Europa, Iberia, Spanair, Lufthansa, Vueling, etc.

When I visited Madrid, I landed on Terminal 1 (Lufthansa from Munich) and from there I walked to Terminal 2 and to the tourist board office to pick up my Madrid travel card (Abono Transporte Turístico). From Terminal 2 you'll find the metro line 8 towards the city. Just take it until the end of the journey at the stop called Nuevos Ministerios and from there take another metro line to your final destination. The journey from T2 to Nuevos Ministerios takes about 15 minutes.

As Madrid-Barajas is a big hub for intercontinental and European flights, try to come in with enough time for you to check in and go thru security check because the lines are LONG. Check if you can check in online or at check-in machines at the airport to save some time (Lufthansa has machines where you can check in).

Going to the airport from the city costs 2€ on a single ticket from any metro station and 2.75€ on a single combined metro ticket if taking the metro from any station in MetroSur, MetroNorte, MetroEste, TFM and Metro Ligero Oeste because you need to change lines. These prices include a 1€ supplement that is to be paid when you come to the airport. More info about it on Metro de Madrid (only in Spanish). This supplement is already included in their period cards and Abono Transporte Turístico (read my separate tip about it).