Originally Posted by
Palal
It's very very pis-poorly organized.
1. Long walks from anywhere to anywhere. Curb to T4S gate = 45 minutes!!!!!
Security lines are usually pretty quick, train ride takes forever due to the distance. Long lines at passport control. Another long walk to the gate. A pis-poorly organized line to go through the secondary security check for US-bound flights (yea, that's thanks US and AA, but other airports can make it happen much quicker).
2. Coming the other way, the bags take forever to come out!
3. Signage sucks - things aren't intuitive, placed in the wrong places.
One saving grace - lounges are very nice.
1. I've never had the experience of it taking that long. I guess maybe for the very end of the piers for a US flight with the extra security line, but it's a big airport. It's hard to have a big airport in a small space. I have never had more than a minute or two in passport control and I'm not an EU citizen (though I do have a Spanish resident card).
2. Yeah, luggage from T4S is a bit of a pain, though I do try to avoid checking luggage whenever possible and it's generally pretty good when landing in T4, which is the vast majority of my flights.
3. I don't understand that at all. Aside from the annoying being dumped directly into duty free from security, I don't get how any of it isn't intuitive.
All in all, the biggest problem is that it was designed to grow with the 2007 Spanish economy. We will get back to those levels someday, but in the mean time it's much larger than it needs to be at the moment. That said, international business is one of the bright spots of the Spanish economy so it's useful to have MAD as a gateway.
Also, it's way better than T1/T2 so there's that