Madrid Barajas Airport

✅ Trip Verified | Long queues and the security staff was angry. General atmosphere was hectic and stressful at Terminal 2. If possible, I will avoid this airport in the future.

Not Verified | Returning hire car to Terminal 1 was a disaster, nearly missing my flight as result. Complete lack of proper signage for rental car return carpark. Rental company aware of problem, having pictures and hand made maps with arrows in their office. For this size international airport very poor experience. Sat nav was not in favour also.

✅ Trip Verified | One of the worst airport I've seen thanks to staff. I've used this airport a few times and even though the new Terminal 4 is nice, its not the case with Terminal 1 and 2 which are old and not really easy to find your bag sometimes. What is the biggest problem is the level of English amongst staff members, at security or anywhere level is at B1 if you are lucky, A1 for most cases. Worst though is level of immigration officers, when I was traveling back with my fiancé she was stopped as she had issues with her visa and out of 5 officers, none of them could put together even one sentence in English, she does speak, but I don't so was hard to know what is happening, I don't understand how can one of the biggest airport employee people who don't speak English at this position, maybe as a cleaning staff, but that's it. Its a disgrace and needs to be fixed.

✅ Trip Verified | Immigration line took 2 hours to go through on arrival and one hour on departure. No electronic check in between Iberia-BA code shared flights so waited an hour to check in in-person. Experience so bad flight delayed as a quarter of passengers couldn’t board plane. The Spanish passport control doesn’t use electronic gates for non-EU since Brexit.

✅ Trip Verified | Horrendous delays at immigration due to lack of staff in terminal 4S. It took over 2 hours to get through immigration on arriving, followed by a farcical covid check, adding another 15 minutes. Returning to UK another 45 minutes to get through immigration. So despite Madrid being a stunning city, I would never go there again. There is no where to sit for the 2 hours you are queuing to get into Madrid, and no where to get a drink. Clearly Madrid does not want people to visit their city, as too much time for a long weekend break is spent standing at immigration.

✅ Trip Verified | If at all possible avoid this airport which was designed and is operated by total idiots. I have used this airport 4 times and each time was torture. 1) It seems that the airfield was designed to be the world's largest airport and as a consequence aircraft taxi times from gate to the runway can be as long as 30 minutes without any holding. 2) Transfers from one gate to another can entail walking up to 2 miles without moving sidewalks. 3) Most gates are without holding areas so getting to a gate is an obstacle run through all the waiting passengers on the way. 4) There are very few annunciator panels and for many flights these may not indicate the gates until 90 minutes before departure. There are no seats available to wait for the gate information so standing is the only option. 5) Even transit passengers have to go through passport control and that can involve incredibly long lines waiting to enjoy very unfriendly police. 6) After a long wait for the unfriendly immigration, one can enjoy another long wait to go through security. 7) After spending 10 hours sitting 2 inches from a stranger, one is exposed for the entire airport wait with a barrage of loudspeaker announcements every minute emphasizing the importance of social distancing and mask obligation! 8) Don't count on English fluency from airport staff.

✅ Trip Verified | This is a review of the very rude unhelpful Ryanair staff at this very difficult to navigate airport. The boarding and unboarding of the flight was a disaster. The return journey was my worst experience. The airline staff were actually causing problems with passengers. They showed nothing less than contempt for customers. I have flown Ryanair many times. I appreciate this is a budget airline with basic service to match the price. I do not expect 5 star service however I do expect a professional service and some basic courtesy. There are now some additional checks for Covid-19 related paperwork but this is a situation that should be planned for. The difference in treatment for UK passengers was very obvious. The service Spanish customers received was noticeably better service and this was not nice to see. From first contact with the gate staff it seemed to me the manager/supervisor did not have a positive attitude. Why would someone work in a customer/people facing position with such contempt for people. I know Ryanair demand fast turnaround and that leads to pressure. Other airports can seem to complete this in a decent manner why they cannot do this in Madrid is obviously a manager/supervisor problem.

✅ Trip Verified | Walking distances between terminals are enormous with not much mechanical assistance. For somebody a little bit elderly it is quite an exhausting experience as in my case it meant 30 minutes walk which I would say is the what is acceptable here. Duty-free area pretty much okay and the airport is reasonably clean. One very sour-point: a queue of several hundred people to check the compulsory location questionnaire which is completely stupid when it is only transit passengers; the sound all they could were quick and polite but vastly under-staffed.

✅ Trip Verified | After arrival it took 90 Minutes for luggage delivery and in the meantime there was zero info on the screens. Very frustrating.

✅ Trip Verified | Madrid Barajas Airport is the most badly run airport I have ever had the misfortune to visit. After Brexit the EU has withdrawn the rights of UK passengers to the use the eGates which means even on relatively short flights from the UK to Spain British passengers now have to queue with all other countries at international border control while those from the EU, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein use the eGates and are through in minutes. There are extremely long waiting times for Spanish customs officers to manually process passports. Despite hundreds of passengers in the queue they only have 2 desks open at any one time. Madrid only has one airport and it has put me off flying there for business now I can spend more time going through passport control than I do in the air.