BA7058/IB3166
MAD-LHR
14th October 2012
A340-642/EC-LEV Isaac Albeniz
Seat: 33A Economy
Scheduled: 16:00/17:20
Off Stand: 16:04
On Stand: 17:30
Boarding was the usual disorderly chaos. At least the ground crew seemed to be enforcing the boarding by row number only rule, however people just crowded the gate area stopping people from getting through.
A bit of pushing and shoving later and I was on to the air bridge. There was a bit of a queue on the air bridge although I didn't see the reason for it.
The legroom was about average.
I’m pretty sure I was supposed to have a seatmate, but he looked around a bit confused, then sat across the aisle a row in front. Suited me and I wasn't about to help him out... Pushback was just past 16:00 local, and we made a pretty quick taxi out to 14L, however once we got there we had to wait for a while.
We took off at 16:25 into some quite cloudy skies. Once again there was no communication from the flight deck so no idea on how long the flight was due to take. The load was pretty reasonable for a big jet on a short route – around 70-80%.
Cabin service started around 20 minutes after take off. As I hadn't eaten all day, I decided to try out a sandwich for a hugely overpriced €7.
As the crew were very slow at getting round to me, descent had already started by the time I was eating. As they reached the row behind, the lady sat there asked for a landing card. The response she got was 'they've already been given out', before walking off. I already had the impression that the Iberia staff weren't the most helpful bunch around after all the faffing trying to get my boarding card earlier, and this had now confirmed it.
As I saw my home town more than a few times, I knew that we were in the Ockham hold. Not that the flight deck confirmed this. Once again they were pretty silent for the entire flight.
As we were rolling out on runway 27L, everybody decided that it would save them some time by getting their things together now - which was slightly unbelievable. But more shocking was that there were no announcements from the crew telling people to sit down either!
It was then a pretty short taxi over to T5C.
Then it was a case of following the signs to the exit, via the transit system.
