spontaneous trip to europe
This is my connecting flight from MAD to NCE.
It ended up being a 12 minute walk from Gate J41 to K95, which was at the end of a long pier of gates. Given that boarding was supposed to start soon, I didn't go looking for a lounge.
Flight routing
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4IB8730 - Economy - Madrid → Nice - CRJ1000
- 5LH1061 - Business - Nice → Frankfurt - A321-100
- 6UA988 - Business - Frankfurt → Washington - Boeing 777-300ER
ib8730
Boarding was late again, beginning at 3:58pm CET. I had to gate check my bag this time. For some reason I thought the larger CRJs had space for a carry-on. At least in my memory my bags fit on United's CRJ-700s.
In any case, my ride to Nice was on EC-MXA, a 4 years-old CRJ-1000. We boarded from a remote gate and were asked to just leave our gate-checked bags to the side.
Business class had a small compartment where they could store their carry-ons, but was otherwise the same seats as economy. The CRJ-1000 had a 2x2 layout throughout.
The seats were actually ever so slightly more spacious than on the A321. No power outlets though. I would be in 8A this flight. Overall this seemed like a packed flight.
We pushed back at 4:19pm CET. While taxiing, we caught a glimpse of a Cathay A350. Oh how I miss Asia! Does anyone recognize the livery with the star in the back?
We ended up taking off at 4:33pm CET.
There was no service this flight. Luckily it wasn't very long and before too long I could see the beautiful French Riviera.
Another look:
As we turned into our final approach to NCE, here's a beautiful evening look at Antibes, which is west of the airport.
The view while landing is also gorgeous. We touched down at 6:01pm CET.
We only taxied for 2 minutes before parking in front of our gate. Our gate-checked bags were laid out very quickly in a row by the plane's door. They were very efficient about it as well, my bag was waiting for me by the time I deplaned.
Good evening ! Thank you for this report. Iberia is offering a quite good product when you are buying the ticket at the lowest price. It is definitly a shame that there is no service on this flight. However, the journey is quite efficient and MAD is in my opinion a quite good airport. The CRJ1000 is my favorite aircraft ! Have a nice day ;)
Thanks for reading LeMatheuxVoyageur!
I agree that Iberia's price for this flight was very reasonable. This is only my second time flying out of MAD and both times were fairly efficient.
Hello! What a nice experience it is to fly on small aircraft like this. The only one I have flown on so far is the Embraer E95 though.
Please! No catering at all on an almost two-hour international flight??? I won't be flying Iberia any time soon.
Yes, that's LATAM in their old livery. I'm learning to love them after reading about Lufthansa and Iberia haha
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for reading Pilpintu!
I definitely prefer mainline jets over regional jets for the most part, though as far as regionals go, the CRJ1000 wasn't bad.
Honestly, I don't know what the norm is for intra-European Y. My only previous experience was an hour-long flight on SAS in Y and that had non-alcoholic beverages at least.