I needed to go to Madrid on business for a couple of days, was planning on flying from Glasgow via London with British (London) Airways, however just before I booked a rail strike was called and ticket prices soared from £100 to £500 each way. I could have flown Little Red from Edinburgh whose prices were still highly reasonable £45 but there was also a direct flight available from Edinburgh with EasyJet for £70 so a no brainer really to avoid the big smoke.
Only the second time I’ve ever used Edinburgh (mainly due to my residence conveniently located near GLA). This time I took the car through and parked it with PremiAir although next time I’ll try and remember my car registration number as it prevents a few issues! The bus to the terminal was waiting and took 2 minutes to the coach drop off point. I’d completed online check-in on my son’s iPad and took a picture of the screen, I wasn’t sure if that would work so it was my intention to get a printed boarding card in the terminal. However there was a pretty big check-in queue so decided to chance it, it worked no problem going through security. I then logged onto the airport wifi and downloaded the EasyJet app which worked equally well in conjunction with my iPhone passbook app. All in all I was highly impressed with the IT performance!
Once airside I had a Wetherspoons for lunch before my phone alerts were telling me to make my way to the gate. At the gate they’d just started boarding and were asking for volunteers to give up their hand luggage to put in the hold (normally a charge for this but waived as the flight was busy). While I ignored the request by the time I joined the queue they were picking out victims and they took my bag off me giving me just a few seconds to grab a few things from it (book, newspaper, headphones so no chance of doing some work onboard.)
I’d been allocated 26F which turned out to be the very last row, window seat. Only there wasn’t a window for this seat. And as I was last to board there was also somebody already sitting in it, a twenty-something woman part of a larger group that I didn’t want to split up so I agreed to take her seat, 25B. Ugg. And the flight was full so no alternatives.
So in middle seat hell I had on my left chicken wings arm rest hog who seemed to be fighting a cold indeed half of Madrid seemed to have it, I have no idea how I managed to survive un-infected. Flight pushed back on time at 1235 and took off on runway 24 followed by the most uncomfortable 3 hours I’ve spent on an aeroplane. I’ve used EasyJet plenty of times for short hops down to London but this was the first time I’ve flown international with them, the seat pitch was a bit too short for my 6’2” height. Managed to read a bit and listen to some podcasts to pass the time. Only contact with the cabin crew was to decline them selling me stuff, snacks, drinks, duty free. I noted it was a very Spanish flight, more than I expected with many of the passengers and some of the crew speaking Spanish which I felt was quite a positive thing for a “British” airline.
The plane did a looping tour of Madrid before coming into land on runway 33L on time.
Used the self scanning immigration, my bag didn’t take that long to appear (wasn’t first though!) and met up with some colleagues to share a taxi (30 Euros) in Madrid rush hour to my hotel in the centre.
Overall it was a flight that got me from A to B efficiently and while I would have been more comfortable flying indirect it would have taken so much longer. It’s a route I’ll be flying much more in the future and I’ll just have to put up with it.
