Review: Air Europa Boeing 737-800 – Madrid to Lisbon

About the Airline

Expectations

Pre-Flight Experience

Booking via AirEuropa’s website proved to be an effortless task, and once I had booked, I had no issue with logging into the site to manage my booking. Alongside the ability to add optional extras, I could also use this to pre-reserve buy-on-board and onboard shopping items. 

As with most Air Europa services, online check-in opened thirty hours before departure and like booking, this threw up no issues. Plus, with the flight taking place in the Schengen area, I was not required to enter any passport details before receiving my boarding pass, therefore speeding things up a little. Whilst Air Europa may be classified as a full service carrier, I should note that I was not able to change my automatically assigned seat without paying an additional fee. However, seeing as I had ended up in a window seat, I couldn’t complain about this.

Costs

Airport Experience

When thinking of Madrid Barajas, the architectural splendour of Terminal 4 may come to mind. However, those departing on Air Europa’s scheduled services are instead treated to the decidedly less impressive surroundings of Terminal 1. However, ignoring the design deficiencies, that afternoon the terminal left me with few complaints. With Air Europa having plenty of staffed check-in counters, I was able to walk straight up to one of these with absolutely no queuing whatsoever, and following a quick interaction, the polite and friendly agent sent my bag off into the depths of the airport and handed me my boarding pass. 

Security took a little longer, although I made it airside within about ten minutes and found myself in the very busy airside portion of the terminal. This was not home to anything overly special, although it was in a reasonable state with a good number of facilities. Boarding was a relatively smooth affair, and whilst the flight was full, passengers were boarded quickly and punctually, with all making it onboard ahead of our scheduled departure time.

Seat and Cabin

Travelling onboard a newer Boeing 737-800, this was fitted with Boeing’s Sky Interior which assisted in creating a bright, modern, spacious and airy atmosphere onboard.

As is the case with almost all European carriers, whilst Air Europe offers a business class product onboard their narrowbody fleet, this is in a ‘Eurobiz’ format, consisting of regular economy seats with the middle seat blocked. Most of Air Europa’s Boeing 737-800s are fitted with 186 seats, which is only three less than the standard low-cost carrier configuration, and these took the form of welcomingly chunky seats, covered in dark blue pleather and topped with an antimacassar. 

Once seated, I found the seats to be well-padded and soft, however, the legroom was far from fantastic and I soon concluded that I would not like to spend any great amount of time in this seat. Nevertheless, this would not be a problem given the very short flight over to Portugal. Disappointingly, the aircraft seemed to be in quite a poor state, and I soon spotted plenty of marks and scratches, alongside a fair number of crumbs from previous passengers. Meanwhile, neither a plug socket nor a USB port could be found around the seats. 

Lavatories

A quick trip to the toilet before departure revealed this to also be in a disappointing condition, with some mystery puddles on the floor and a rather overbearing and unpleasant stench. 

Inflight Entertainment

Onboard, the aircraft was fitted with wifi, and the usual packages were offered for those needing to stay connected to the outside world. In addition, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Air Europa offers a complimentary wifi-based inflight entertainment streaming service. Whilst the content of films, television programmes and games was by no means expansive, this was still a nice touch that still isn’t all too common onboard European carriers. In addition to this, overhead screens broadcast the moving map throughout the flight, and a fairly decent bilingual inflight magazine was offered. 

Catering

As is now the case with many European carriers, those flying in Economy on Air Europa cannot expect to receive any complimentary offerings on their short-haul flights. Instead, a full BoB service was made a short time after leaving Madrid and I was pleased with the expansive menu offered. That said, given the length of the flight and having had lunch on the ground, I opted against making any purchases. As per the below, prices seemed to be in line with other European carriers. 

Summary