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Change of Airport MAD to MAD?

Posted by (Pennsylvania) on

Hi Everyone,
We are looking at flights for a trip next summer (Best of Spain Tour with independent travel in Portugal afterwards). We are planning to fly home from Porto, Portugal. British Airways has a well-priced flight that routes Porto-Madrid (via Iberia) then the international flight to Philadelphia. This is all one ticket.

The confusing part is that during the final booking confirmation (which we haven’t completed yet) it says, in RED, ‘Change of Airport’. It states the flight from Porto arrives into Madrid (MAD) T4 and then our next flight to Philly departs from MAD T4S. Upon researching this, it seems we would simply take a subway style airport transit from one terminal to another. By the way, our connection in Madrid is about 3 hours, so I’m hoping that would be plenty of time. It also seems like MAD is the only airport in Madrid (but maybe I’m mistaken), so I don’t understand where the ‘airport change’ is coming from, except if it’s just a weird glitch on the BA website that should really say ‘change of terminal’. These are the types of details that worry me:)

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

Posted by
2662 posts

That is weird!
I've flown in and out of MAD a few times, and the connection to T4S is as you saw described, same airport, different terminal.
MAD is huge, and it will take a while to walk, but signage is good and includes estimated time to get to your destination.

Posted by
647 posts

You have it right as far as I can see. Only small nit is that your flight(s) will actually be on
Iberia or American metal. BA may have a good fare, but it's a codeshare flight most likely.
You might want to check the fare for your itinerary on American and Iberia's websites.

For what it's worth, looking up that itinerary on aa.com shows the wording "change of
terminals" for the Madrid connection, which might give you a bit more confidence that
BA is the one who is misleading you.

Posted by
283 posts

Thanks for the responses…we ended up calling British Air today and they confirmed it was just a terminal change within MAD, as we thought. And we were able to make our booking, so all is well:)

And Shoeflyer, yes it is a codeshare, and BA had the best price. We booked with British Airways since our outbound flights from the U.S. will be on BA. We like to buy specific seats (bulkhead or exit row), and in our experience making the Economy level booking with American doesn’t allow us to select seats with BA until checkin. But if you book with BA, AA will let you buy seats of your choice anytime. At least that’s been our experience and it’s worked for us!

Thanks again!

Posted by
9371 posts

T4S is a very long way from T4. And yes, you take a train from one to the other. Three hours should be plenty of time, but I wouldn't dawdle. You walk a long way before you get to the train.

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