I'm traveling to Madrid on a CO award ticket and need to purchase a domestic connection to my final destination, BCN. My CO flight arrives at 9:25 am. What's the minimum time I need to clear immigration & customs, change terminals and check in with Air Europa, Spanair or Iberia shuttle? Air Europa has a great price for the 11:30 am flight-could I make it?

Sounds like you have PLENTY of time, I think you should go for it. Connections in Madrid are not hard to make, you may even try to check your luggage with CO all the way to BCN, even including your Air Europa ticket (they are partners). Even though you wouldn't be travelling on the "same" itenerary, you can show your Air Europa ticket to CO agent and they would be able to check your bags to the final destination.

I'm going DCA-EWR-MAD-BCN at the end of the month. Taking Iberia for the MAD to BCN run -- they couldn't price out the itinerary on Sabre for me, so I took the flight they could price. The Air Europa flight has the advantage of giving you OP miles.

Have fun-- I'm looking forward to my BCN trip.

Umm.....

One step beyond using Air Europa for CO credit:


=== >You can have your award ticket include the Air Europa segment for free.

Just call the partners award desk at 1-800-344-3333. They know plenty about partnerships. Only down side is it may need to be a paper ticket instead of electronic; no cost to you for the paper ticket.


Why look for a "good price" when you can get the same for free????

I have done what VJ said - CO included the Air Europa segment to BCN for me. You have plenty of time for the connection and the flight on Air Europa will be pleasant. You'll also come into BCN in terminal A, which is less hectic and crowded than B which you would get with IB.



------------------
-alan in sitges, home of Si-Do

My wife and I currently have a reservation (miles not yet deducted) to use Delta miles to get CO BF tickets for MCO-EWR-MAD-EWR-MCO. As with others above, we actually are flying into MAD and then planning on making a same-day connection to BCN. We'll stay in BCN for 4 days and then fly back to MAD for 4 more and then return to the states. I'm assuming that because it's award travel with Delta miles that we can go no further than MAD on the CO award since Air Europa is obviously not CO metal, just a partner. Am I correct that we would need to buy separate tickets for the MAD-BCN-MAD part of our trip or is there some way to get that included as part of the award ticket? Even if we have to pay, I'm glad I looked at this thread since Air Europa is a lot cheaper than the other fares I had found through Expedia.

[This message has been edited by upgrader (edited 08-28-2003).]

You might also want to join up the itineraries because of baggage rules. As part of a North American itinerary you can bring 2 bags of 50lbs each (70 if you are elite). However, if you are on a European itinerary by itself you baggage allowance drops to 1 bag at 20-23kilos. (or a combination of bags as long as they are under the weight combined).

It also protects you if you miss the connection because of delay. I would call CO and ask if they can put your MAD-BCN paid portion on the same ticket as your reward.

Makes life MUCH easier.

- HobokenFlyer

I did this last year....same flight to MAD. My flight to IBZ was on Iberia. I had plenty of time....and since Iberia was not affiliated with CO, I still had time to get my baggage, go through immigration and customs, and do some shopping. You should be fine.