Review of Air Europa flight from Madrid to Barcelona in Economy

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 second and last leg of this long journey.

Introduction

Welcome back to another trip report. This is part 2 of my TR series on UX that began in Malaga and up to Barcelona via Madrid. If you want to get some context on how this trip came to be, I encourage you to read my previous TR where I discussed it there.
I start off arriving on my outbound flight from Malaga having just flown a budget subsidiary of UX called Air Europa Express. Now I'm off to my next connecting flight flying mainline UX which was really the primary reason I decided to take this trip in the first place and that's to be able to fly on their B787-9 Dreamliner! 

I had the very lucky opportunity to actually see my UX Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner arriving into the gate having just arrived from it's outbound flight from Amsterdam.

Connecting within Madrid-Barajas Airport

UX operates out of terminals 2 & 3 from Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport. However if your traveling internationally with UX (outside of schengen area) you'll depart out of terminal 1.

My flight is UX 7703 with a scheduled departure time of 15:10.

Since I arrived at terminal 3 and now have to make my way down to gate D58 which is in terminal 2. Total time it took to walk was around 10 minutes so not to bad.

While walking my way to my gate I spotted this AeroMexico Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner bound for Mexico City as AM 2; flight time: 10h 55m. One day I hope to fly on AM long haul as I've heard good things about them.

My aircraft

And here's my Boeing 787 Dreamliner that'll be taking me on this short hop to Barcelona this afternoon.

Some information about my plane:
Flight number: UX 7703
Aircraft: Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner
Registration: EC-OEM
Delivered: January 21, 2021
Age: 2.2 years (at time of flight)

This aircraft is configured in two classes: 30 business class and 303 economy class for a total capacity of 333 seats. On today's flight I chose seat 50K towards the back of the plane. Seat map courtesy of aerolopa.

A look at the gate area just before boarding here in terminal 2. I absolutely hate these gates and they reminds me of the horrible (even worse) boarding gates in Lisbon. Every time I have the unfortunate luck of departing from these gates it reminds me more of boarding at a bus terminal rather then an airport.

Boarding

Very soon boarding was announced. As you would expect, the scene was chaotic with a constant stream of people walking in both directions next to us all while people are trying to cut through all while having a few hundred people line up for boarding in one small area. These gates weren't clearly built to handle boarding large aircraft such as ours today.

Nonetheless I boarded with zone 1 thanks to my Skyteam elite plus status.

Welcome aboard the UX economy class cabin which is laid out in a spacious yet standard 3-3-3 abreast.  

Seat

And here's my seat for the next 1hr, 50K.

Cabin view from my seat.

Each seat was equipped with a nice sized PTV. However during the whole duration of this flight the IFE system was locked and only played commercials after takeoff which was disappointing.

These seats offer a pretty descent amount of legroom of 31" pitch.

These seats offer both USB type B & C power ports along with dual prong headphone jack. I do not recall though seeing a universal power outlet beneath the seats which on a long haul flight (which these aircraft quite frequently do) would be inconvenient. 

The recline button is located on the armrest.

The overhead panel only contained individual reading lights but no personal air vents unfortunately.

I used to consider the electronically dimming windows a very cool feature on the Dreamliner. However I've come to gradually hate this now as through my many past experiences FA's tend to control these windows (especially on long haul flights) and keep them locked for almost the entirety of the flight. cough..cough AA.

From where I was sitting I could still see my previous aircraft I was on that brought me here from Malaga (EC-NZN).

MEA Airbus A320 bound for Beirut (BEY); flight time: 3h 56m

UX Express pushing back for it's departure for Vigo (VGO); flight time: 54m

Boarding is complete and today's flight load to Barcelona this afternoon is completely full in all cabins.

Pushback

We pushed back 15 minutes behind schedule.
You can check out the entire pushback, taxi and takeoff sequence in the video below:

Shortly after the safety video began playing.

It seemed that the taxi to the runway took half our scheduled flight time to BCN to reach 😅. 

Takeoff

We finally reached the runway and we'd be departing off on runway 36R this afternoon.

Bye Madrid ✌️. 

A view of the cabin during our climb out.

Tray table & seat back contents

The tray table folds out and can be extended. Was glad to see that this seat was a lot cleaner than my previous UX Express flight from Malaga which almost felt like a complete nightmare.

The seat pocket contained: UX's inflight magazine which had a lot of good travel related articles (albeit in Spanish) which kept me entertained for the whole flight since the IFE's were not in operation. 

It's sad that almost all airlines have done away with inflight magazines. I used to enjoy this very much and my favorite part every time I read one was looking over the fleet and route pages which I used to do a lot as a kid and still do to this day 😅.

Duty free magazine.

BOB menu booklet.

The items available were quite extensive however they seemed a little pricey if you ask me.

Safety card.

And lastly the wifi guide.

While we were still climbing out, the FA's wasted no time and began the BOB service. From my observation, very few people purchased any items from the FA's.

Not long after we reached cruising altitude at 26,000ft. Due to the short duration of this flight, we'd only be at cruising altitude for 6 minutes.

I could start to see the Mediterranean Sea already.

Initial descent

The FA's began preparing the cabin for landing.

Flying parallel to BCN. We'll be making a 180° degree and descending from the north.

Looks like I chose the perfect side to sit on to catch fantastic views of Barcelona during our descent.

You can check out the entire descent and landing into BCN at the video below:

Can you spot La Sagrada Familia and Torre Glòries?

Barceloneta beach and the iconic W hotel.

Landing

This afternoon we'd be landing on runway 24R.

Welcome to Barcelona!

We arrived at the gate 6 minutes ahead of schedule.

Deplaning

We'd be deplaning from the L1 door which gave me a sneak peak into the business cabin.

One last look at my 787, thanks for the safe and fun journey!

Luggage pickup is complete, now I can head off and enjoy my stay here in the wonderful city of Barcelona!

This concludes the trip report series, thanks for reading!