Madrid Barajas Airport

Despite a huge and seemingly well-planned airport with the luxury of enough runway and terminal space this place is soulless and manned by staff who simply don't care; many I have encountered are just rude and seem to go out of their way to be unhelpful. Having travelled through this place several times I would avoid it. The only problem is for Latin America the alternative is often Miami probably one of the few airports which is as bad.

I use this airport frequently (at least twice a month) and use all terminals although lately I am mostly confined to terminals 2 and 4. A regular issue at all terminals is the poor management of security checks. Passengers are forced to walk loaded with plastic trays and trolleys to the conveyor before security. Some old people barely manage. When this was pointed out to the Security attendant he said "this layout is not for the passengers confort but for our confort". Just goes to show how much they care. After removing all metal objects the gate pinged as I passed through. After asking what had pinged (for my info to avoid it in the future) I was told I did not need to know and was subsequently frisked. Frisking is done in view of all the rest of passengers. After the walk to the conveyor belt how much more humiliating can it get? Terminals 12 and 3 are certainly dated but they wok efficiently to get you in and out fast. Terminal 1 was clearly a late addition and there are some long distances to manage but not too bad. Lines in general are manageable and baggage actually comes out very fast from these terminals. What I do not get is the design of Terminal 4. It is clearly designed to make it look nice but not to be good for managing passengers and planes. An architecture principle states that form follows function but not in the case of Terminal 4. The main building is 1200 metres long which makes impossible to walk through in less than 15 minutes to exit from one of the ends. Huge baggage claim areas with unused belts still on average it takes 50 minutes to get the baggage from landing. This may be very pleasing to the architect but I hate it. It is new so they had the chance to do it right and they messed up.

In and out of T4S last month. Security check (at 0630) very efficient and quick and journey from taxi drop off to gate S51 (halfway down the building) in T4S was about 20 minutes. An eternal problem at Barajas is retail opening hours but a couple of shops and Mcdonalds are open early in T4. Only the one cafe open at that hour in T4S though. Arriving back at T4 was something of a revelation. Early on 40-minute waits for bags was the norm (and this got into the Madrid newspapers) so they did at least bring in estimated arrival times for baggage on the monitors. Now they actually manage to get bags there ahead of the estimate - they turned up within 5 minutes of arriving from T4S (so about 20 minutes from stepping off the plane). Someone's reprogrammed the baggage belts and it's not too bad at all. So about 30 minutes from leaving the aircraft to getting in a taxi (at a now very well managed pick up point).

Nightmare - the airport is huge overwhelming and no one seems able to help. Also make sure you leave enough connection time between T4 and T4S - you need at least 30-40 mins and that's without going thru security. My heart was in my mouth because I almost missed my flight not realising how long to get between 4 and 4S this - I ran for my life when the penny dropped- and you run and run and run - you never seem to get to the end of the corridor.

Do not transit at Madrid airport. Just travelled back from Lima and all the passengers transiting had a long journey to another terminal where they had to go through security again all their duty free purchased at Lima was confiscated. The only way to avoid this was to exit the airport and go back to check in buying a suitable bag to put the duty free in en route. Huge numbers of very angry customers and probably happy airport staff who get to drink all the booze they confiscate. The only time this had happened to any of the passengers before was in India. Staff were rude and unhelpful and the queue built up as passenger after passenger struggled to work out what they could do to avoid throwing away expensive and valued presents and souvenirs.

Departed from and arrived back into T4 last week. After previous criticisms I've made on this site about long long waits at T4 baggage reclaim I have to say that this time bags were on the belt within a couple of minutes. I hope they can keep it up! Passport control officer even managed a smile too.

Customer service is grotesque. Airport employees are not helpful and did not put in the effort to help passengers who need assistance. They also lack the knowledge of their own airport. Asking them questions about airport facilities only return answers like "No" and "I don't know". If they can't help who can? Their handling of customer's lost luggage also reflects lack of centralized management and proper operation procedures. We were transferred from one desk to another just to try and find a piece of luggage they forgot to place onto a plane. Nobody had any idea where the lost luggage was and who was supposed to be responsible for it. Ultimately upon reaching the desk which was supposed to handle our matter the employee seemed reluctant to help. This made our experience of traveling through that airport both uncomfortable and infuriating. Management could do much more to improve the service side of the airport.

Terminal 4 is huge but I had no problem finding my way through. Check in was alright although queues at the BA/IB counters can be long since the autocheckin machines never seem to work properly. Connecting to the Satellite terminal can seem like a lot but the train is fast and literally took 2 minutes from security- the queues of which can vary from non existent to horribly chaotic- to the train station in the lower levels. The Satellite is identical to the main building but in a much more human scale. No calls to board which is partly good because the airport is quiet but bad because you need to check the screens constantly -though these are plentiful throughout the airport. Shopping is good in the main terminal but bad in the satellite though you get pretty much the same offer in terms of restaurants/cafes. IB's VIP lounge has improved a lot though - finally there's WiFi! Airport was clean. Only major drawback - if you get your gate changed last-minute (something quite common in flights that are a bit delayed) you might need to run given the huge distances.

This airport is not well-suited for business travelers. There are no electrical plugs to be found anywhere. You must bring your computer's battery fully charged from home and use it while you wait for your connection. And then of course you may have no battery left on your next flight. Definitely not recommended if you plan on bringing a laptop computer.

Terminals 1/2/3 are gigantic and dated and the walk from the Metro to the terminals (particularly Terminal 1) is a trek. But having just flown into and out of Madrid this past weekend the signs regarding the supplemental fare are all over the place. They're on the trains (in English and Spanish) on platforms vending machine screens on station walls even on large stickers on the floors. That supplemental fare of one euro is peanuts on top of the normal fare which is also one euro. I'm not aware of that many capital cities in Europe where you can get from the airport to the centre for two euro. So the layout of Terminal 1/2/3 leaves much to be desired but I had minimal queuing times when I travelled.