Have finally got our flight tickets for Costa Rica next week. We are flying first from Heathrow to Madrid on an Airbus A320-100/200. Is this likely to be a standard 3-3 seating configuration with no entertainment? (I know we definitely won't get any included food on this leg).

Our second leg from Madrid to San Jose is on an Airbus A340-600. I've tried to find out some info on this and it looks to me like we will get a 2-4-2 configuration with shared overhead TVs - is this correct? And how often are we likely to be fed on an 11hr flight?

Also, if anyone has any experience of transiting from Madrid Term4 to Term4S then I'd be interested to know how easy the transit is.

Thanks!

Corinne76,

The A320-200 is indeed configured 3-3 with no IFE. The A340-600 is configured 2-4-2 in economy and has dropdown screens located over the centre seats. You'll get a meal approximataly 2 hours after take off and a second 90 minutes before landing.

Darren

Also, if anyone has any experience of transiting from Madrid Term4 to Term4S then I'd be interested to know how easy the transit is.

I've found transits at Madrid to be really easy - there's an automated train that connects all of them - a bit like the monorail between the North and South Terminals at Gatwick but better.

I was also impressed with the way the Iberian cabin staff dealt with transit passengers. On a delayed flight from Heathrow where I was making a domestic connection in Madrid to Seville, they came round and spoke to me and others in a similar position, checked that our boarding cards were OK or whether we would need to be met with fresh ones and told us which gates our onward flights would be departing from so that we didn't waste time trying to find out once we'd landed. They also warned me that they thought that it was unlikely that ny case would make the conenction and if it didn't, that there'd be someone to meet me in the baggage hall at Seville to take my hotel details down so that it could be taken to my hotel in the morning. They were right it didn't, but there was someone there to confirm this - he knew exactly which passenger he was looking for so I didn't have to hang around waiting to see if it was on the carousel or not. As I was on the last plane of the day from Madrid he took my details and promised that it would be on the first flight from Madrid the following day. It was and was delivered to my hotel at 11am the following morning! On the return flight a similar thing happened but it took BA 3 days to get my case from Heathrow to Edinburgh!

But what particularly impressed me was that there were a lot of passengers who were making international connections to Latin America, and the cabin crew arranged for a bus to be waiting on the tarmac at the back of the plane for those with the tightest connection time for a Sao Paulo flight and they were all off-loaded first from the rear door and taken straight round to their plane without even having to set foot in the terminal! The rest of us were off-loaded in order of connection departure times and they made sure that anybody who was finishing their journey at Madrid stayed in their seats until those making connections had got off. The Spanish can seem abrupt to us but the man in the seat behind me knew that the steward who pointed at him the moment he went to stand-up meant business when she said 'Senor, you are not going anywhere - sit down' ! I knew that she was simply pointing out to him that she knew that he wasn't making a connection and he should wait but she was absolutely right - he wasn't going anywhere until she gave him the say so and he promptly sat down again

SM

Hi Both

Thanks for the info - very helpful!