Review of Iberia flight Munich → Madrid in Economy

Hello everyone! welcome to the trip report from Munich to Madrid. This report will cover the outbound flight from Munich to Madrid with Iberia. In November I decided to have a trip to Madrid. There were a few options either with Lufthansa, Iberia or Air Europe. At the end I chose Iberia and the price for the return ticket was just about €110. Iberia has 3 flights per day between Munich and Madrid. The morning flight and the evening flight are operated by Air Nostrum with Crj-1000. This was very tempting, as flying on a Crj-1000 was quite rare, however the morning flight was too early for me (7:30am). That was the reason I picked this flight.

4 days before my flight, I ordered some food and drinks on Iberia website. Iberia launched 'Deliverfly' pre-ordered inflight food service in May 2021, preordered food will be delivered to your seat directly.

24 hours before my flight, I tried to check-in online, and just realized that selecting the seat would cost some money. On the other hand, if you do not select the seat, the system would allocate the seat for you automatically, this would not guarantee that you can seat together with your partner. There are several price for the seat booking, those with more leg room would cost €22, and I selected the cheapest option, of €7 at the rear side of the plane.  Afterwards, I filled out the Sanitary Control Form to obtain a QR code which was mandated for everyone flying into Spain.

On the day of flight we arrived at the airport at 10:15am. Iberia flight was allocated in terminal 1. We checked from the display that our flight would be departing at gate D16.

We went straight to Modul D, and printed out the paper boarding pass from the machine. There were a lot of people lining up for the security check. After queuing for a few minutes, a airport staff told us to go to the end of the terminal where the check counters were literally empty.

The gate D16 is located right after the security check. When we arrived, the gate was still handling the previous flight from Air France AF1423 to Paris.

There were still lots of time, and I did some plane spotting. Next to us parked a Boeing 737-800 D-ATUA from TUI fly, it would operate the flight X3 2162 to Fuerteventura at 12:10pm.

Finnair A320-200 OH-LXF was preparing its flight to Helsinki as AY1402 at 12:00pm. At the back, Air Europe B737-800 EC-MJU, with the "Argentina Iguazú Falls" sticker on the fuselage, was departing to Madrid as UX1516.

Turkish Airlines A330-300 TC-LNE, departing to Istanbul as TK1630.

KLM Cityhopper E195-E2 PE-NXB was arriving from Amsterdam as KL1793.

At 11:11am, our plane arrived from Madrid, however, the gate was still occupied by the Air France's E190.

4 minutes later, Air France's E190 finally pushback and freed up the gate for us.

At 11:18am, our plane arrived at gate EC-JDL, A319-100 delivered to Iberia in December 2004. It carried the name ''Los Llanos de Aridane''. Currently Iberia has 4 active A319-100 and the rest of them were retired.

Back to our gate, the counter had already opened for our flight to Madrid. Our flight was also codeshare with VY5087, OB5315, BT5169, AA8834.

At 11:39am, boarding was started, at first priority boarding was called, then followed by those seating at the back. There were some people who did not registered the QR code, and had to get it immediately with the phone in front of the gate.

Upon embarking the plane, disinfectant wipe was provided by the crew at the plane entrance. I guess this has became the norm nowadays.

My seat, 22K, seat pitch was not really good but that's what we had paid for.

There were no PTV and no power port, only safety card and sickness bag were available at the seat back. Passengers can use the in-flight digital press service to download in advance the magazines or newspapers before the flight. The seats were showing its age.

View out of my seat.

At 12:08pm, pushback was commenced.

Taxing to runway.

At 12:19pm, we took off from RWY26L

Getting through the clouds.

About 5 minutes later, seatbelt sign was turned off. The male flight attendant immediately brought us the pre-ordered food. I ordered two meals, the first one was BLT sandwich with Beer Mahou, which costed €12. The sandwich was indeed very delicious.

The second one was the Tuna wrap with muffin, and I chose white wine Mayor de Castilla as the menu drink, this costed €9. In addition, I also ordered a coffee for an extra €1. I told the flight attendant that I wanted to have that later.

For the complementary drink included in the ticket, the airlines was serving water, apple juice and pineapple juice. I opted for an orange juice.

At 13:15pm, I asked for the pre-ordered coffee.

Cruising at 35000 Fleet over southern France, Truyère river could be seen.

At 13:30pm I visited the lavatory at the back.

Cabin view during the flight. The loading was probably around 80%.

As we were flying away from France and approaching Spain border, snow mountains of the Pyrenees could be seen.

Once we entered Spain, the clouds began to disperse.

At 14:09pm, announcement from cockpit that we were expected to land in 14:20pm. The seatbelt sign was turned on again. I was a bit surprised because the normally the announcement would be made 30 minutes before landing.

On short final.

Eventually we landed on RWY32R at 14:22pm. Total flight time was 2 hours and 3 minutes.

We parked at gate J40 of terminal 4.

Cabin during deplanning.

Last view of the aircraft. The plane would continue the next flight to San Sebastian as IB494 at 16:00pm

Our flight route passed through Switzerland, France and then Spain. (picture from flightradar24.com)

Thanks for reading!