Flying home (from Madrid)

[bhemphill]

I am starting My Camino June 5, 2025. I will be returning July 15 back to my home in the US. I am working on my trip back home and have a few questions.

Do you really need to arrive at the Madrid airport 3 hours early as suggested?
My flight leaves MAD at noon on July 15 and my flight from Santiago won't arrive until 10:30 am. I'm thinking I need to arrive in Madrid the night before.

Any suggestions on where to stay for the night before my flight in Madrid? I'm getting myself very confused here.

 

[Molly Cassidy]

My flight leaves MAD at noon on July 15 and my flight from Santiago won't arrive until 12:30. I'm thinking I need to arrive in Madrid the night before.

If your flight to Madrid arrives after your flight from Madrid leaves, you definitely need to try something else!

If you book one ticket for the two flights, then the airline will only sell you journeys they think will work, you should be able to check any hold luggage through to your destination and the airline will be responsible for rearrangements should you miss your connection.

In any other circumstances, it would be wise to give yourself plenty of time to transfer at Madrid.

 

[bhemphill]

I just caught that. My flight from Santiago actually arrives in MAD at 10:30. But that only gives me 2 hours and everything I am reading says 3 hours minimum. Thanks for bringing that typo to my attention.

 

[Molly Cassidy]

Is it 2 hours or less than 2 hours? How much do you think it will cost if you miss the flight? Will you miss time at work?

I've never flown transatlantic, so I can't say how long it takes, but 3 hours seems to be normal all over Europe for flights to the US.

It's up to you how much risk you're willing to take. On the other hand, it would be a shame not to actually see Madrid. I would fly the day before and have a night in the city.

 

[Anhalter]

Is it a checked-through flight or do you have to get your luggage, check it in again and get through security once more? If its first, 2h should be good, if not, i would not do it.

 

[Bob Howard]

Out of caution, I always stay in Barajas the night before departing for home.

 

[Juspassinthru]

If you can check your bags, presuming you’re checking bags, through to your final destination, and assuming no delays, that connection shouldn’t be a problem. If you have to leave the airside (secure) area of MAD for any reason, it could be a problem.

 

[bhemphill]

Out of caution, I always stay in Barajas the night before departing for home.

Yes, after reading up on this, I will do that. I found a hotel that will pick me up from the airport and take me back in the morning. And feed me breakfast to boot! So much planning . . .

 

[Bob Howard]

Yes, after reading up on this, I will do that. I found a hotel that will pick me up from the airport and take me back in the morning. And feed me breakfast to boot! So much planning . . .

Not sure what you mean by a hotel that will pick you up from the airport . . . There's a train stop in Barajas just before the airport, from which you can walk to your Barajas hotel, and then their shuttle will deliver you to the airport in the morning.

 

[Bob Howard]

Oops, I was thinking you would train to Madrid inasmuch as you're going to stay overnight. But, of course, the whole point of your original post was about flying into MAD from SDC and making your flight home.

 

[natefaith]

Welcome to the Forum @bhemphill!

If it's helpful...We fly often from Santiago to Madrid then on to the US. If you've booked everything on one ticket, and if you can check bags all the way through to the US, then a layover of 1.5 hours in Madrid should be OK. Especially if you keep yourself moving to get to your next gate, you should have time to spare.

We also usually book seats at the front of the SCQ - MAD plane to make sure we can deplane pretty quickly after arriving in MAD.

There's also the option of booking an earlier flight from SCQ - MAD so you can arrive in MAD before 10:30. I think the earliest flight of the day is at 6:30am, with another one at 7:30am or 8am or so.

 

[Damien Reynolds]

Welcome to the Forum @bhemphill!

If it's helpful...We fly often from Santiago to Madrid then on to the US. If you've booked everything on one ticket, and if you can check bags all the way through to the US, then a layover of 1.5 hours in Madrid should be OK. Especially if you keep yourself moving to get to your next gate, you should have time to spare.

We also usually book seats at the front of the SCQ - MAD plane to make sure we can deplane pretty quickly after arriving in MAD.

There's also the option of booking an earlier flight from SCQ - MAD so you can arrive in MAD before 10:30. I think the earliest flight of the day is at 6:30am, with another one at 7:30am or 8am or so.

Is it less expensive to fly on "one ticket" from SCQ to MAD and back to the USA? It is too late for me now, but next time I'll consider.

Usually I have a round trip planned ahead of time, according to my dates of entry and departure, and then when it gets close (about 3 weeks), after figuring out where I'll actually be, I get a local ticket to fly from SCQ to MAD. Then spend the night in Barajas... Original flight leaves the next day.

Always looking for suggestions.

 

[dougfitz]

Do you really need to arrive at the Madrid airport 3 hours early as suggested?

This seems to be the default for international travel, and commonly used by airlines irrespective of the realities.

The first of these is that where you are starting your travel, they want time to run safety/security checks on your checked bag. If your baggage is checked through to your destination, that will normally only be done once at that first airport. In places where I have had to retrieve my bags at the first port of arrival and take them through customs/quarantine, there doesn't appear to have been another set of safety/security checks. That said, I am not familiar with how this might work arriving in the US.

• But my experience with MAD is that provided the bags are checked through, they won't book you if the time available to tranship is too short.
• If you buy separate tickets, you might well need all of that time to negotiate baggage claim on arrival and getting to the check-in for your next flight, especially if it is in a different terminal building.

The second of these realities is when the check-in gates are opened. If you are flying with an airline that maintains a permanently open check-in desk, it normally won't be an issue. But there are many airports where one or both of two things happen:

• the check-in gates are not permanently staffed, and only open close to the departure time. That might only be two hours such as the Ryanair gates at SCQ and OPO. Ryanair typically sends an email saying they want you to arrive three hours before departure time, even though it is clear that they won't be opening the check-in until two hours beforehand.
• when the check-in gates do open, they will only handle one specific flight at a time. If you try and check-in for a different flight, you will be asked to wait or perhaps sent to the back of the queue on the check-in counter handling your flight. (see note below)

The third is that the major airline groups (Star Alliance and OneWorld) are excellent at getting any transhipped bags from an arrival aircraft to whatever flight they will be on next in the same group. They are not so good at getting bags from an arrival flight in one group to the next flight in another group. Having that happen on your journey home might just be annoying, but could be quite disruptive if it happens at the start of your travel.

Note: it seems to me that the budget carriers only maintain sufficient staff at airports like SCQ to handle a small number of concurrent flights. At SCQ this seems to be just the one flight. The same staff doing check-in will then be doing boarding control at the departure gate. That isn't necessarily unusual - major airlines here in Australia have similar patterns at smaller airports. But it also appears that some of these airports don't have baggage handling facilities capable of handling several different flights concurrently. This would require separating the baggage into streams for each flight, and having a holding area for each stream. Even if they are available, I suspect the budget carriers avoid the cost of using those services, much the same as they avoid the cost of using air-bridges for embarkation and disembarkation.

 

[natefaith]

Is it less expensive to fly on "one ticket" from SCQ to MAD and back to the USA? It is too late for me now, but next time I'll consider.

Good question. I think if you're flying two flights on Iberia, from SCQ -> MAD, and MAD -> US, the two flights added up could be more expensive than just flying Iberia from SCQ -> MAD -> US on one ticket.

Of course, usually pilgrims are not flying all the way into SCQ before starting the Camino. So your plan makes sense, just to do a roundtrip from the US -> MAD -> US and then figure out how to get back to Madrid after the Camino.

Recently, with ticket prices fluctuating kind of an insane amount, what I have seen some people do (and what we just did, see below) is to buy two one-way tickets: the first from the US -> MAD (or Porto), and then travel on another one-way ticket after the Camino, SCQ -> MAD -> US. This can work well, price-wise, if one of the itineraries happens to fall during low-fare days or if different airlines have better deals.

For example, we had visitors come this year over Christmas break. If they bought round-trip fares from the US -> MAD -> SCQ -> MAD -> US, the price for each ticket was going to be $3,600! They definitely couldn't afford that. So they bought two one-way tickets: US -> Frankfurt -> Porto on Lufthansa. We picked them up in Porto and brought them to Santiago. On the way home, they did SCQ -> MAD -> US on Iberia. The total for all of this was $1,800 each. Still so much more expensive than non-holiday travel, but the fare for Iberia in January was so low, even though the fare coming over on Lufthansa in December was pretty high.

Lots of details. Sorry if my response makes your head spin! It feels like such a tedious game sometimes.

 

[dougfitz]

Is it less expensive to fly on "one ticket" from SCQ to MAD and back to the USA? It is too late for me now, but next time I'll consider.

Usually I have a round trip planned ahead of time, according to my dates of entry and departure, and then when it gets close (about 3 weeks), after figuring out where I'll actually be, I get a local ticket to fly from SCQ to MAD. Then spend the night in Barajas... Original flight leaves the next day.

Always looking for suggestions.

@Damien Reynolds, I have done something similar to this for many years. My son's family live in England, and I will get a cheap flight from SCQ to one of the London airports and visit them for a few days. This gives me a bit more flexibility at the end of my camino and I can also spend a day or two in SDC should I wish. I wouldn't change this approach.

 

[dick bird]

Is the flight Santiago to Madrid with the same airline as your flight to the US? If it is and both flights were purchased on the same ticket, you´ll be OK. If it isn´t, you´d be taking a big risk arriving in Madrid with less than 2 hours to collect your baggage and check in. Stress free travel is plenty of time travel. I´d advise staying the night in Madrid.

 

[trecile]

Is the flight Santiago to Madrid with the same airline as your flight to the US? If it is, you´ll be OK.

That's only if the flights were purchased together on the same ticket. If they were purchased separately, even with the same airline, the connection is unprotected.

 

[bhemphill]

Out of caution, I always stay in Barajas the night before departing for home.

That is good advice. I have decided to do that.