Review of Iberia flight Madrid → Vienna in Economy

Introduction

Hello amigos!

This FR covers a flight to Vienna I did back in 2019 (catching up with the backlog!).  

One day my boss calls me to his office and asks me how's life, and then tells me if I'm free to go to a conference in Vienna in two week's time. I didn't even wink and said "yes".  By the afternoon my secretary told me I could either go through Wizz Air or Iberia. I didn't feel like trying Wizz Air yet, so…Iberia it was.

At Madrid Barajas

I took a cabify to the airport, that brought me there in no time. Since I wasn't checking any bags I went straight to security, which didn't take long to clear.  And then i was on my way to the Plaza Mayor Lounge to get some food and hydration. This is a huge advantage, considering there's only BOB on IB's European flights.

This lounge isn't as big as the other lounges AENA operates throughout Barajas' 4 terminals, so it gets easily crowded and it feels quite tight. But it does the job. 

I picked the ingredients for a DIY sandwich

The view from the Lounge is not great, but not bad either…let's say is just boring. But hey, I've seen worse!

boarding iberia's a319

I went to my gate after I got a SMS to my phone advising it was boarding time. Our flight was fairly full.
Our particular A319 (but I reckon is most, if not all of this fleet) didn't have the horrible standard seats you'll find on A320s and A321s. I 

But legroom felt appropriate.

taxi and takeoff

Iberia's terminals are conveniently located to the runways for take-off, and it shows when compared to a departure from Terminals 1-3. If I'm not wrong Air Europa even filed a complaint about an undue advantage to IB.

Most flights had left T4, but T4S was still pretty full with glorious A346s (they are missed)

US-bound flights (aka AA minihub) corner

We made it to RWY 36R and rocketed towards central Europe while another IB A319 watched over us.

enroute to VIENNA (aka. The sightseeing tour)

In a nutshell, IB's service for this flight was nil. 
No IFE (other than the Ronda Magazine, which used to be fairly decent) and no food other than BOB.

So either you sleep, BYO IFE or…as it fortunately happened to me: stare out the window! 

So, we start in the middle of dry an hot Castille 

Then over the Pyrenees

To greener France…

Don't know which two cities or towns these were

Then Lyon showed up

And its airport

Bye bye Lyon…hope to meet you soon!

Now some…(nuclear?) plant

Now it's Geneva

Zooming into GVA (and mainly 4/5ths of the city).

Crossing Lake Geneva (or Leman)

To Laussane

Then Neuchatel

Then we flew over Bern (so many fond memories of my summer over there )

Swimming in the Aare, and sipping some Feldschlossens in the park…

Then it was Luzern….

And Zurich in the distance as we flew over the south of Lake Zurich

Zooming in to the city and its airport

Then we flew over the Rhine (and possibly Liechtenstein)

And so we entered Austria…and unknown lands for yours truly. 

Was this Munich in the distance?

We then started our descent…

The plane did a couple of zigzags and I totally lost my bearings…

And out of the blue….we were on the ground….

This gorgeous Aeroflot A321 preceded us….the folks on the front actually got lost trying to reach their gate and caused a bit of traffic.

We disembarked into the terminal, that was amidst some works…but it was quite decent.

I grabbed a cab into town…and then the culture shock: you couldn't pay the ride using a credit card (you can pay almost everything with plastic here in Spain), but the silliest part is that the fare is "just" under the threshold for CC payments to be permitted. I guess this was a scam attempt…or not, anyway this was sucky.

And so, my happy 4 day stint in Vienna began :)