Flight routing
- 1UX 5036 - Economy - Malaga → Madrid - Boeing 737-800
- 2UX 7703 - Economy - Madrid → Barcelona - Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner
A visual of my entire journey from Malaga to Barcelona via Madrid which would cover a total distance of 493mi. This trip report will cover the first leg of this long journey.
Introduction
Welcome everyone to another trip report series. After spending a few weeks exploring Spain (Valencia, Alicante, Granada & Malaga) it was time to start heading back north to Barcelona where I'll spend my last few days of my trip there before going back to the US. When searching flights, there were several options to choose from. There were many daily nonstop flights offered by both Vueling and RyanAir between Malaga and Barcelona. If I remember correctly RyanAir actually offered the cheapest option (including a checked bag) at 85 USD one way which I was going to go for. But after checking skyscanner, I found an extraordinary fare by Air Europa for 55 USD. Granted it had a very short layover at MAD but I had two things going for me if I were to take UX to BCN. 1) UX is part of Skyteam and I have Skyteam elite plus status which gives me a few perks like extra baggage allowance, waived seat section fees and priority boarding. 2) The second leg of this flight would be operated by a 787-9 Dreamliner which my inner avgeek self could not resist to say no to 😅.
This would take me on a slight detour rather then a nonstop flight but the departure time out of Malaga and arrival time into Barcelona with UX were also very favorable and would put me arriving into BCN just before 5pm. I of course didn't hesitate and booked with the UX and now I'm here. Let's go on with the trip report!
Malaga
I ended up staying here for three short days which in my opinion was not a good call as I wished I had more time to explore this marvelous city. For those wondering, Malaga to me is like the Nice of Spain IMO, granted not as grand nor super elegant like actual Nice but you get my point 😅. Since I came here in March, the weather was actually not cold but not hot either, just perfect! But that also meant that I could not enjoy the water as it was still freezing. Nonetheless I enjoyed the beautiful sun rays during my short stay in the city.
On my last afternoon in Malaga I decided to hike up a popular view point and take in the spectacular view of the entire city as it slowly got dark and watch as the city came to life after dark.
Metro to Airport
Fast forward and its now the next day and I began to make my way to the train station which would be my form of transport to the airport.
After a 15 minute walk I made it to the station.
The one way train fare to the airport (if I remember correctly) was around 3 euros. Which is a no brainer considering taxis/uber's would've been around 30-40 euros one way. Would only probably make sense if your traveling with larger pieces of luggages and/or family but for me this made perfect sense. And to make things better, the airport is only a few stops from the city center, a total of 12 minute ride so very quick.
The ride itself was uneventful and most of the journey was underground but the train was at least very clean.
About 15 minutes later I made it to the airport station which is underground and had to go up 2 levels to reach the departures floor.
Unfortunately for me ,on this day at least, all the escalators going up were not working (although the ones going down were). So everyone had to haul their luggage up the stairs.
After carrying my luggage up two long sets of stairs I finally made it to the departures level.
Welcome to Malaga-Costa del Sol Airport.
Let's get checked in…
The departures board.
My flight is UX5036 which is still showing as on time.
Check-in
I found the check-in counters for UX and thanks to my Skyteam elite plus status I can use the SkyPriority lane. I still find it a bit funny that UX pretty much borrowed this signage from AF/KL as their was no UX signage except for the TV screens right above the desks.
After dropping off my bags and requesting a paper copy of my boarding pass, I was now ready to go through security control. In total it took no more then 5 minutes. I'm not sure if this is a Europe or a UX thing of using just one boarding pass for two or more flights which I thought was cool. At least in north and south America I'm used to receiving one separate boarding pass for each individual flight. I felt stupid when the agent handed me just one boarding pass and I instinctively asked for my other flight's boarding pass and he looked at me weird and told me that the barcode worked for both 😅. Well now I know.
Security control was fine but it was crazy busy at this time of day. In total it took me 20 minutes to make it airside.
After making my way through the maze that was the duty free zone, I finally made it to the gate area.
Since I had over an hour before boarding would start I decided to explore the terminal a little and came across a nice little lounge area at the very end of the terminal in 2F.
It was much quieter up here with more comfortable seating, children's play area and a mini exhibit which I'll show in a bit.
Finnair Airbus A321 departing for Helsinki (HEL); flight time: 4h 30m
And here's the small exhibit area I was talking about earlier.
There were many cool displays here such as a few airplane engines, old radars, and even a hot air balloon cabin just to name a few. Not sure if this was just meant for kids but I definitely found it amusing 😅.
My aircraft
And here comes my aircraft just arriving from Madrid.
Some information about my plane:
Flight number: UX 5036
Aircraft: Boeing 737-8KN
Registration: EC-NZN
Delivered: May 26, 2013 (initially to Fly Dubai)
Age: 10.5 years (at time of flight)
My first flight today with UX will actually be with Air Europa Express, a low-cost regional subsidiary of Air Europa. UX Express fleet consists of just 9 Boeing 737-800s, this being one of them of course. Last year I had a chance to fly with mainline UX from Porto to Madrid (which you could read here) so it would interesting to see if there's really any difference between one or the other in terms of seat and services.
This aircraft is configured in a all economy class layout with a potential capacity of up to 189 passengers (depending on the need for euro style business class seats with middle seats blocked). For todays flight up to Madrid I'll be seated in 25A.
Shortly after I made my way to the gate area which happened to be right below where I was.
Today I'd be departing out of gate D66.
Boarding
Boarding began right on time and I boarded with zone 1 group.
Welcome onboard the UX Express economy class cabin.
And here's my seat for the next 45 minutes up to Madrid today (25A).
Off the back I could already tell that these seats are more LLC style with minimal padding compared to my UX 737 flight I took last year.
Legroom was surprisingly good, these seats offer 30" of pitch. Comparable to US legacy carriers.
The tray table folds out but does not extend.
Was also surprised to see that these seats recline although the recline was minuscule like 1".
The overhead panel consisted of individual air vents and reading lights in addition to a flight attendant call button.
AGP control tower.
Boarding is complete and today's flight load up to MAD is around 70%. I got lucky and had the middle seat vacant which would make for a slightly more comfortable flight.
RyanAir B737-800.
Heard the doors close right at 12:30. Looks like today for sure we won't have any delays 😉.
Pushback
You can check out the entire pushback and spectacular takeoff at the video below:
Today we'd be departing of runway 30.
Until next time Malaga, hope to be back real soon!
Seat back contents
The seat back contents contained UX's inflight magazine, BOB menu and safety information card (which for some reason I forgot to show 😅).
I used to love airline inflight magazines but now in days it's becoming a thing of the past. My favorite parts were looking at the fleet and route maps.
The aircraft I am currently on. Notice how this aircraft has it's own category compared to UX's regular mainline 737 right above it. Can imagine that most people wouldn't notice that difference and think they are flying on UX mainline aircraft.
The BOB menu was very extensive and was itself another magazine filled with enticing things. However the prices for me, for me at least, was a little on the more expensive side.
We reached cruising altitude at 32,000ft.
Very dirty seat
I briefly noticed this when I initially got into my seat on the lack of cleanliness on my tray table but when doing a deeper inspection around my seat, I was terrified on how dirty and disgusting my seat was. There were black sludge like stains all around my tray table.
Large amounts of hair somehow stuck all around my window.
And most disgustingly of all I found gum in three places, this one being in the seat back pocket. Let's just say that I've never been more anxious to get off a plane as much as this one. It was simply horrible, this seat and/or cabin could definitely use a deep clean.
The FA's sprang into the cabin to conduct the BOB service. Despite this being a 45 minute flight I did surprisingly notice a lot of other fellow pax purchasing food items and drinks.
Ciudad Real Airport (CQM)
Flying by the city of Toledo.
Initial descent
After cruising at 32,000ft for only 6 minutes we began our initial descent into Madrid.
The FA's began preparing the cabin for landing.
You can check out the entire descent and landing into Madrid in the video below:
Eurostar Madrid tower in the distance.
Landing
This afternoon we'll be landing on runway 32L.
Welcome to Madrid! 🇪🇸
Arrival at gate
Aegean Airbus A321neo departing shortly for it's flight back to Athens (ATH).
Managed to capture my would be B787-9 Dreamliner that'll be taking me to Barcelona in just a few moments now arriving from Amsterdam.
Deplaning
Now I had to rush to my next gate as my next flight would be boarding in just 15 minutes.
Last views of my 737 that brought me here from Malaga. Thanks for the safe ride!
This concludes the trip report, stay tuned for the next one of this series. Thanks for reading!
Nice review!
Nice review!
Thank you! 😊
Gotta love public transportation in Europe vs the US, when even in a medium-sized city like Malaga, you can take the train from the city centre to the airport.
As far as the flight itself, pretty typical experience from an Iberian carriers...that is, super basic and indistinguishable from a Low-cost carrier. That said, the major airlines of the Iberian peninsula offer very competitive prices, so it's fine, and if you have status you get all the perks of them being a large legacy carrier, which wouldn't happen on an LCC.
Yuck, very dirty cabin...my how things have changed in such a short time since Covid when everything was always spotless.
Thanks for sharing!
My pleasure and thanks for reading!