Madrid Flights

The Madrid airport Barajas is located 13 kilometers from the citycentre. The arrival hall of the international terminal is located on groundfloor. from there you can take the metro to all metro stations in Madrid. Outside the airportbuilding the busses arrive, which take 20 minutes to town. the bus starts from Terminal 1 to plaza Colon. they ride every 12 minute and cost 3 euro. There ar also taxis which take 20 minutes and cost approx 15 euro. If you want to fly inside Spain, Iberia has frequent flights to Barcelona. at an automate you can purchase tickets upto 15 minutes before departure. Span Air and Air Nostrum fly between Madrid and the regional capitals.

When we arrived in Madrid earlier this year we arrived at the new terminal 4. Opened in 2006 this airport now has two new runways and also a fabulous state of the art terminal. It is full of glass and tubular steel. Shops and restaurants and plenty of seating areas.
It is amazingly quiet and it is also very peaceful
One drawback at the moment is that the metro does not yet run this far so you have to allow time to take the courtesy bus to terminal 2 and then a long walk to the metro.
Luggage takes ages to retrieve and the place is lacking in good signs at the moment. I am sure all that will change though.

Airport is very nice and modern. It is large with four terminals, so if you have to make a connection, it might take you some time.

It can be reached by metro, except for the terminal 4 which is where Iberia is located.

Since May 2007 there is a metro line (8, pink) to get to/from the airport to the centre of town. The ticket is 2 euros (double than normal tickets) and, changing lines you can reach any part of the city.

Barajas airport is in the north east of the city, about 15 km from Madrid. The most convenient way to get there is by metro to Aeroporto. It can be quite a long walk from the metro stop to the correct terminal.

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As a result of a 2 hour flight delay, we arrived at Madrid Barajas at well after midnight. We must have been one of the last, if not THE last flight to arrive that evening at T4. There was little help from the airline or airport, and we had a long trek to a poorly signed train, which took us to the baggage hall, where we had a one hour wait for luggage.

There seemed little interest from any of the staff on duty. The new terminal looks good but, some of it's facilities and services are really poor!

Madrid Barajas Airport (MAD) is Spain's busiest airport, handling more than 40 million passengers a year between Spain's attractive capital city and hundreds of domestic, European and international destinations.

Madrid Barajas International Airport is located 13 kilometres (eight miles) north-east of central Madrid. Road links to all terminals have recently been revamped; the Madrid Metro is easy to access from Terminals 1, 2 and 3 and reasonably easy from Terminal 4; buses provide an effective service; taxis are always available, with a journey time to the centre of Madrid in under 30 minutes, depending on traffic.

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It was a short hop from Malaga to Madrid where i had to transfer to Amsterdam. So we stayed low and i had a good view on the inland of Spain from the air.

I had to move from one arrival/departure hall to the other. Carmen had warned me that transferring through Barajas could be hell / taking a long time. The devil must have taken a day off then since i had no problems at all. In less then 15 minutes i had been to the toilets (hate going inside a plane) and been driven in the electric train from T4S to T4. So that left me with more then 2,5 hrs to spare.
Lucky for me there was a Starbucks with sofa seats. The departure halls are completly renovated but decent seating was forgotten (as ever).

One thing i dont like on spanish airports is that they are very late with announcing which gate you are going to use. Nothing untill it is actually boarding time, i kept checking the screens. I noticed that on Malaga but also here.