Review of Air Europa flight from Madrid to London in Economy

Introduction/context

Hey guys! Thanks for joining me on another flight report.

After a few days in Belgium, I will be heading home to London with Air Europa with an overnight layover in Madrid. This flight report is for the second leg of that trip after flying in from Brussels on Iberojet's A320 - feel free to check out that flight report if you want. I explained in a bit more detail there about the reason behind this routing, but in short this is the cheaper than flying direct, plus I kinda wanted to fly Iberojet and Air Europa and see what they're like.

On top of the base fare, I only had to purchase my seat reservation; the base fare includes 8kg of hand luggage and an under-seat bag.

Madrid barajas airport (mad)

I spent the first few hours trying to sleep, which was very hard due to the uncomfortable seats and the automated announcements every 15 minutes or so. After sleeping for around 2 hours, I gave up and spent the rest of the night on my laptop editing photos and doing work - at least the airport has plenty of free charging ports so you shouldn't have to worry about running out of battery. 

The departures for this morning; you can find our flight (UX1013) on the right-most display.

At around 4am the airport started flooding in with passengers for their early-morning flight. At this point I decided to walk around and take a few photos. Madrid has 4 terminals, Terminal 1-3 is in the same building and can be easily accessed from one to the other, however Terminal 4 and its satellite Terminal 4S is in another part of the airport and will require you to leave airside. 

The 'C' gates, which is part of Terminal 2 - the oldest terminal in the airport.

The 'D' gates, also part of Terminal 2.

The 'E' gates, which is part of the much newer and more pleasant Terminal 3.

Between Terminal 2 and Terminal 3 you are greeted by one of the many duty-free areas around Madrid. However, most of them weren't open this early in the morning.

After sitting in Terminal 3 for a little while, I decided that it was time to walk to my boarding gate in Terminal 1, on the other side of the building housing the 3 terminals. The walk took around 25 minutes including passing through border control. 

The 'B' gates in Terminal 1 - as usual the non-schengen area is a lot quieter as there were only a handful of flights departing in the morning, most of them going to London or the UK.

The duty-free store in the terminal was closed, I'm not sure what time it opens but I'm very glad to have gotten my shopping done in the main Schengen area. 

The boarding gate. We waited here for quite a while as boarding only started around 20 minutes before our scheduled departure.

The flight

The route for our flight:

Some quick info about our Boeing 737-800:
Registration: EC-NVJ
Age: ~15 Years

She was leased to Sunwing and TUI for the majority of her life before moving to Air Europa's fleet just a few months ago, meaning that the cabin is very new.

I was one of the first to board - so I got the chance to take a photo of the seat for the first time.

The seat back pocket and tray table. I really like the seats - it feels really high quality and sturdy compared to the really thin seats that we're seeing these days.

Plenty of legroom thanks to the design of the seats - honestly one of the best I've had.

The audio controls in the armrest with the headphone jack on the bottom.

First views out of the window, I do love this wingview!

We departed around 20 minutes late.

Taxiing past an Aeromexico 787 in the 'Quetzalcoatl' livery - it's one of my favourite special liveries.

Terminal 4 in the distance.

Takeoff off 36L and views of Madrid.

Climbing above the clouds with a lovely sunrise.

Last views of Spain.

Flying over the Bay of Biscay

Given my sleepless night in the airport, I slept for the vast majority of the flight. I'm honestly amazed that I stayed awake long enough to get enough photos for this report. 

Anyway, time to have a quick look at the contents of the seat back pocket, which includes:

  - Air Europa's inflight magazine
  - A safety card
  - Air Europa's onboard menu

In the menu, there are quite a lot of drinks and sandwiches available with a limited selection of hot meals, all for a reasonable price. Overall, it's a very decent menu. 

Over France - the clouds will get thicker and thicker as we near the UK.

Weather in London doesn't look promising at all - looks like there's gonna be a lot of rain.

Starting descent into London.

First views of home - accompanied by the usual weather. ;)

Welcome to London! A fairly bumpy approach later, we landed on time.

London Gatwick airport (lgw)

Had to get a quick snap of our plane on my way out since I didn't get the chance to do it during boarding.

We arrived in South Terminal. As usual with Gatwick, it is very efficient with the huge amount of automated passport gates. It took me around 20 minutes to go from the plane to the train station, obviously aided by my lack of checked baggage.

The main arrivals hall.