Review of Iberia Regional (Air Nostrum) flight from Malaga to Melilla Island in Economy

【 Crossing the Alboran 】

Hello and welcome to another series!

This is the first of two FRs from my mini-trip to Spain in December. Honestly, the only reason I went to Spain was to ride the 36-hour ferry between Portsmouth and Bilbao. When planning this trip, I looked at a map of Spain and wondered where in the country I wanted to go the most. With this being my first trip to mainland Spain, you'd think I'd want to go somewhere touristy or popular. No, I (being the geography nerd that I am) decided that the first thing I want to do after arriving in mainland Spain… is to leave immediately. (No offence to Spain, I love the country and would love a week to explore it properly). 

Melilla is an autonomous city of Spain across the sea in North Africa. It is one of two cities on the continent, the other being Ceuta. Both of these are claimed by Morocco. Melilla has a population of around 90,000 and is a special territory of the EU, meaning that it is part of the Schengen Area. I really wanted to go to Melilla, not because of its attractions, but more to see what life is like in a Spanish city surrounded by Morocco. 

The territory is served by a small regional airport with a tiny 4700ft (1400m) runway. Because of this, large jets like the A320, Boeing 737, or even the Embraer E-jets can't land here. The airport is served solely by Iberia using its ATR 72s. It actually gets a lot of traffic with regular flights throughout the day to Malaga, Sevilla, and Madrid. It even has weekly flights to Barcelona with a flight time of 1 hour 45 minutes and, crazily, to Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. That's a torturous 4-hour flight on an ATR and is one of the longest flights I've seen flown on a turboprop. 


P.S. I'm not sure why in the database MLN is 'Melilla Island'… as much as some people in Spain might want it to be, Melilla isn't an island and probably never will be (unless in the future people find a way of strapping a rocket on it and launching it away). Anyway, if that could be changed in the database, it'll be lovely, thanks!

I aim to offset all of my CO2 emissions from flights. All emissions are calculated using the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and I will be funding projects approved by The Gold Standard.

【 Málaga–Costa del Sol Airport 】

The drop off area outside the airport.

Departures for the morning. I picked the first flight to Melilla mainly because it was the cheapest. 

The check-in area. 

This is the area for easyJet. It's deserted at 5am. 

With it being so early, check-in and security took around 5 minutes in total. And as usual for Europe, you have to walk through the duty-free store to get to the gate. 

A very standard European duty-free, it's not surprising considering most of these duty-free stores are operated by the same company. 

There's also a good number of food options, which is nice for a smaller airport. 

Photo of the gates. The non-Schengen gates are ahead. 

I was totally expecting to board from a bus gate, but we're actually boarding from a normal gate today. 

【 The flight 】

Flight time will be around 40 minutes and here's our route:

Boarding started on time, and, with the ATR not being compatible with jet bridges, you have to walk outside (essentially around the jetbridge).

Nice photo of the control tower on our way to the plane. 

And here she is. 

Some information about our plane:

Type: ATR 72-600
Registration: 9H-NCD
First flight: 5 December 2012
Age: ~13 years
Config: Y72

Operated by Mel Air (a Maltese Airline, hence the Maltese registration) for Iberia Regional, she was first delivered to the now-defunct Brazilian airline Voepass (then known as Passaredo Linhas Aéreas) in 2012. She moved to Air Nostrum/Iberia Regional in 2019 before being re-registered in her current Maltese reg in January 2023. 

Vertical stabilizer shot. 

The standard ATR seats onboard. 

The aircraft is equipped with 72 economy seats:
Legroom: 30" (standard for the ATR but is actually better (on paper) than the Iberia European narrowbodies, which have around 28”)
Width: 18”

It looked like someone got bored on their flight! Considering the long routes that these Iberia ATRs serve, I'm not surprised. 

As I mentioned above, the legroom is actually pretty good for a turboprop. 

Pushback 5 minutes early. 

Takeoff! Bye bye Malaga (for now). 

Despite being a turboprop, streaming is available.

It's got 3 TV shows, some magazines, games, and some sports stuff. Honestly, it's pretty terrible for a streaming service, but it's an ATR… unless you're one of the rare people doing a 4-hour flight on this thing, you'll never need it. (If you are… a good streaming service won't make the flight any less torturous, honestly.)

The buy-onboard menu and duty-free catalogue are also available online, which is so much easier than me photographing everything (in terrible lighting).

Sunrise over the Alboran Sea (I never knew the Western portion of the Mediterranean was called that, so it was a fascinating bit of Googling for me haha). 

Descending into Melilla with Morocco in the distance. 

Melilla has a very weird/interesting approach.  You approach the runway perpendicular to it, then make a 90° turn 4 miles before the airport to land. I'm not sure why this is done, maybe it's noise abatement for nearby Nador? 

At least you get some really nice views of the city. The entire territory can be seen below with the border around the middle of the port. 

Welcome to Melilla! We arrived 15 minutes early. 

【 Melilla Airport 】

Photo of the terminal building and the control tower. 

The baggage reclaim area with two belts. I didn't have any luggage on me since I'm only visiting for a day trip. 

The arrivals area landside. 

Since I'm leaving Melilla by ferry, I opted to check out the departures/check-in area out of interest. 

And here it is. It's very small (as expected) with a café on the far side. 

I'll end this FR here. As mentioned earlier, this is only a day trip - I have around 12 hours before my overnight ferry back to Malaga. Feel free to check out the tourism bonus below.

The next FR in this series will cover my return flight back to London. Thanks for reading and see you there!