Iberia Business Class to Santiago (Chile)

This trip report covers my experience of Iberia Business class from Madrid to Santiago Chile, as well as some coverage of my return from Medellin back to Madrid. I’d planned this South America trip right back from January as I was taking almost 4 weeks off for it. Iberia offered by far the most convenient options.

I was looking at cash fares, with the best fares originating out of Italy hovering around 1700 Euros, but that already adds another stop to my journey. I found fairly open Avios availability so I booked the outbound first, for 51,000 Avios + 84 Euro one-way off peak pricing. A couple of months later, I booked the return. 

I then married up BA flights from London, which worked quite well to minimise connection times, since both Iberia and BA have many flights a day each on that sector. Altogether my total outlay was 132,000 Avios (most of which I transferred from BA) + around £180 to cover taxes and surcharges. 

Flight Details

Route: Madrid-Santiago Chile
Flight no: IB6833
Date: 11.11.2019
Departure Time: 11.45pm
Arrival Time: 8:50 am
Aircraft: A340-600 (Tail EC-JNQ )

Seat: 6A Business Class (window)

Check-in

Unfortunately BA did not allow me to check bags through all the way from London (there was no chance to even try as in T5 they are making do almost without many physical check-in desks, unless you require special assistance). Therefore I had to check in again with bags in Madrid.

I arrived in Madrid just past 7pm in the evening and picked bags to check in again. Iberia are also pushing everyone to self check in (therefore no particular Business Class focus here).

It was all pretty quick and efficient and I headed to the lounge within a few minutes.

One of the annoying things about Madrid in this instance is for flights arriving and departing from terminal 4s, you have to catch a train back to the main terminal to get your bags/re-check in and then grab the train back to 4s for next departure again. Minor inconvenience rather than a hassle to save hundreds in extra UK taxes, but do be careful with your connection timings here!

Fast Track security off course helps. In Madrid airport I’ve always found this to be fast indeed.

Lounge

Iberia has fairly decent lounges both in terminal 4 and 4s. I’ve used both several times now and will review them separately.

Boarding

About an hour and half before departure I got an email notification with the boarding gate details and a boarding time of 11.05pm. So, about 11 I left the lounge for Gate 37. On reaching the gate however, it looked as though they were anything but ready for boarding! I went for a wonder around, which meant I pretty much gave up the chance to be the first to board.

When I came back about 15 minutes later, most passengers seemed to have formed queues according to the boarding group numbers.

Still some more waiting followed (so much for Premium travel!), passengers needing special assistance were called out, before we Business class eventually started boarding around 11.32pm. I was doubtful we would depart on time still!

Iberia Business Class Seat & Cabin

A few minutes after taking my seat, I started to feel a little unwell, and I wasn’t sure why at first. I felt really hot and flustered, occasionally looking around while everyone seemed busy settling in. Then about 10 minutes in, I actually started sweating, when it dawned on my that it was like 90 degrees inside the cabin! It started to feel like a sauna.

Before I had a chance to ask the crew, sure enough the co-pilot announced they were having problems with the APU and apologised for the cabin temperature.  Not a great start really, I had showered in the lounge all fresh and mentally getting ready to sleep for a long flight ahead. This was doing the opposite.

Aside from the temperature issue, I was quite impressed with how well the business seats and cabin was still maintained. It had a freshly cleaned smell, the seat and IFE still looked relatively up-to date. Especially as the plane itself was already 13 years old.

I chose 6A, as that is the most private window seats, along with other even rows. The seat contains a fairly deep, semi open storage on the right of your shoulders. Additionally there was enough space for placing books/laptops on the side table on the right. I was initially looking for a holder to put the Inflight magazine/duty frees etc but that was lacking, so you would either have to place them on the side console or on the footrest in the front.

While passengers were still boarding, the crew introduced themselves to those seated and offered welcome drinks of either cava or orange juice as well as the amenity kits.

The amenity contents was quite nice, loved the flights socks. Some of the items were of far inferior quality on the return leg though.

We left the gate at 12.18am, and took off 12.29am.

It was a pretty full business cabin, with only a couple of the 46 seats empty.

About 5 minutes after take-off the temperature finally reached a more comfortable level.

Dinner Service

Service started within 20 minutes of take-off. With hot towels, further drinks and WiFi vouchers.

Meal choices were then taken. Here were the options:

As far as starters go, this was fine. I actually liked the cold tomato soup too. For the main, I chose what I thought was some kind of sea-bass..

Which left alot to be desired. It was simply poor, I ate only a small bit of the fish. I had immediately wished I chose the Veal Burger instead.  To be fair I had the delicious veal in the lounge and was not even all that hungry really. Thankfully!

This was followed by an equally mediocre dessert, the tangerine berry ice-cream.

I did notice there were quite a few people who skipped dinner completely and went to sleep, maybe they were onto something?! Again I had a couple of bites and literally could not wait for them to come take it all away.

Bed time

Dinner service was pretty much done within 45 minutes and the cabin dimmed.

I was ready to settle in with a movie. There is no turn down service or mattress topper provided so I requested an additional blanket as I dont like to sleep directly on a seat surface. The IFE is not the most intuitively organised but eventually I realised they did have a good range of content. The outbound A340 screens were not touchscreen, but the return A330 was. I started watching Gifted.

We were somewhere over north Africa while I drifted off to sleep.

I woke up naturally about 6 hours later while we were over the Brazilian Amazon. Actually, I semi-woke up couple of times in-between because the extra blanked I requested, was more like a fleece and kept rolling up and forming an uneven surface. What was supposed to aid a better sleep ended up making it worse! Ay me!

The pillows and blanket were both supremely comfortable, though cabin temperature itself was still on the warm side.

Still 4 hours to go..

I still felt rested enough and at this point it would have already been past 8am U.K time, but the sun was only just rising. Suddenly I was very glad I was already awake to watch the sunrise, the photos simply do not do it justice.

I decided to walk up to the front galley and had a nice chat with one of the crew and one of the pilots! Some of the pilots were taking their rest now. The crew rest on the A340 appears to be just below the front galley. The crew explained how they much prefer the A340s over the A350s because they have more space in the galleys and the crew rest areas are bigger too.

Breakfast

About 1 hour 20 minutes to landing, breakfast service began. I didn’t even realise there were no options for breakfast, it was all set. That’s fine, but a slight problem..

I do not eat pork!! I suppose if I had inspected the menu again in the morning, I could have asked them to serve me the breakfast without the pork on my plate. Anyway, I didn’t want to make a fuss so just had the plain omelette and some toast.

On the plus side they also had several fresh juices. Crew came around for coffee/tea top ups a few times in between.

Eventually, the 13 hour flight was almost up.

As we started our descent, the purser came by thanking me for choosing to fly with Iberia and asked how my flight went and asked if I was happy with the service. I decided to play it all on the low, as any of the short comings were certainly not their fault. While the temperate issue was still fresh in my mind, I completely forgot to even mention the pork issue.

Oh well.

Return flight from Medellin

I returned just a few days ago on a slightly newer A330, and again for the most part, the service was similar.

The main was better than the first, though the person across the aisle ordered Prawns which looked a lot better.

This may have been the worst breakfast I’ve ever had in a plane. Period. And yes it includes amongst all the Economy flights I’ve taken years ago. The omelette was cold and plain. Coffee served was also cold. The croissant did not feel or taste anything like a croissant. Just a cold peace of lard.

Overall thoughts

This was my first time flying Iberia long haul. Its not an airline known to be the most inspiring or lavish, so one has to manage their expectations from the outset. Therefore, overall, I was actually more impressed with the hard product holding up so well. The staff were friendly, polite. A few did not speak much English (especially noticeable on the return). I don’t feel like they went out of their way to provide excellent service but rather just performing their duties as business class crew.

Even though I did not have any high expectation, the food (quality, choice, presentation) was mostly disappointing. Its one thing to be able to skip dinner and enjoy a meal pre-flight at the lounge instead, but quite another to wake up from a long overnight flight, and be served a poor sad looking breakfast. Its a shame as it feels like a missed opportunity for Iberia to give travellers a taste of the great local food they have in Spain. Though on that note, I cant say Alitalia Business does Italian food any justice.

I’ve noticed some inconsistencies with some of the amenity kit contents too. The return service provided a very economy style cheap eyeshades and socks, they looked like they wouldn’t even last the night! In conclusion, for this trip, I still would have chosen to fly Iberia because convenience of flights compared to BA, which is the only other carrier with comparable flight timings.