Changing planes in Madrid
 

My daughter is traveling to Sevilla to study this winter. She flies from Chicago to Madrid to Sevilla. She only has a 55 minute layover in Madrid. Will she have to claim and recheck her luggage? Is she going to make the connection? The terminals are connected by a train that runs every few minutes.

Only the airlines can tell her if they will check her luggage through to Seville or not. She MUST check with them. But she will have to go through Immigration in Madrid - and if her flight is late at all her chances of making the ongoing flight diminish significantly.

Hopefully this is a single ticket and if she misses the ongoing flight then the airline is required to put her on the next flight with an open seat - she should identify the options now so she is ready to ensure the airline does so.

However, if these are separate tickets and she misses the flight she will be considered a no show and will have to buy a new ticket at the walk up flight. So she needs to determine this now - and if necessary make a change in her ongoing flight to have more time to make the connection.

In either case she should study the Madrid airport layout including where she will land and where the new flight will take off from so she is ready to move quickly.

For the best chance of making the flight she should sit as far front of the plane as possible, get off quickly and jog as fast as she can to Immigration to avoid being at the back of a long line.

If she can check her luggage all the way to Seville (ask your airline )
and her flight is on time , and there is no big lineup for passport control...

If you've already bought the ticket, there is nothing to do but wait and see what happens. If you haven't, I would try to get a slightly longer connection time, if possible. As others noted, if these are not the same airline, I really wouldn't do it. If they are, there isn't that much to worry about except some possible delays when she or her baggage get there.

I flew to Seville last year and I didn't have to fetch my bags en route at the connection airport, but I didn't choose the airline you did, I can tell, as I changed in Amsterdam, I believe, I think it was KLM. I have connections in Europe a lot and never have to fetch my bags when it's on the same airline, in fact, but it's always been within the Schengen zone. The same country, never. I always book the entire ticket with one airline though, even if the connection is a partner.

It sounds like she will be flying on the America Airlines/Iberia flight out of Chicago. She will be arriving at T4S and departing from T4. If she is flying on one ticket, she will be directed to the next gate upon arrival and her bag will be transferred. Customs will be in Sevilla.

We went through Terminal 4S last month (PHL to MAD)

If by layover you mean the scheduled arrival time and scheduled departure time are 55 minutes apart, probably not.

Also, most airlines stop boarding 10 minutes before departure time.

It is a long walk to the train, with two or three choke points at the escalators.

Mark

If she's flying AA, her bags will go to Seville, as Robert said. But, if at all possible, try to get her a later flight from Madrid to Seville. Barajas is a vast airport, and 55 min is a VERY tight connection.

Yes, 55 minutes is a tight connection when going from T4S to T4 because of the distance and having to go through security to get to the gate in T4.

Iberia normally does not announce the departure gate for domestic flights until 20 minutes before departure. They only give you the area of the terminal it will be departing from until then, so you know where to go and wait. Once in the area, she'll have to look at the board to find the gate.

Flights from the US to Europe often arrive early, so she may well have over 55 minutes.

Let's assume this is a single itinerary. The bags would be checked though to Seville in this case. The airline must consider it a reasonable connection time, or they wouldn't have sold it. Airlines hate empty seats. More to the point, if she does miss the flight they would assume the responsibility of getting her to Seville on a later flight. I wouldn't change the ticket. She'd hate to be sitting for four hours waiting for her flight, after an overnight journey, if she really could have caught the earlier flight.

If it's not a single itinerary, it's nowhere near enough tkme. In that case her bags can't be checked through, even if it's the same airline. She'd have to colect them and recheck them.

Thank you so much! I think it's a single itinerary--the travel agent booked all the flights at the same time---am I understanding that correctly as the meaning?

She is flying out of Indianapolis-British Airways operated by American Airlines to Chicago and it says it is British Airways operated by Iberia to Madrid, then Iberia IB to Sevilla. On these flights, will it get checked all the way through?

They should. They are all part of the OneWorld Alliance.

Do you have the same ticket code on all the flight segments?

BA code is 125, AA is 001.


Mark

It has the same confirmation number on all legs.

Your daughter will be taken care of then, regardless.

Mark

I don't know if this little bit of info helps, but I came across it on Trip Advisor when I was doing my Madrid research.

Many international flights to Madrid arrive at Terminal 4S, usually at one of the gates. There are very few signs as to where a passenger should go to next.
1. Look for the Salida (exit) sign and follow it.

2. Everyone has to go through Passport Control. This is on an upper level and at the exit. The non-EU kiosks are to your left and are often quicker.

3. You then have to take the automatic train to Terminal 4. Take the elevator down to ground level, quicker than the escalator. Be as far right as possible in the station so that you will be in the front of the train. The automatic train leaves Terminals T4 and T4S every 3 minutes, day and night. This will take about 4 minutes

Thank you all so much! This has helped a great deal!