Review: Iberia’s new A330 business class seat and the Velazquez lounge

This is my review of the new Iberia fully flat business class seats on its A330 aircraft.

I was in Madrid on Wednesday and Thursday, taking advantage of the American Express Platinum offer of a free night at a Melia hotel. I will cover the hotel stay tomorrow.

Back in January I wrote an interesting piece on short-haul flights which use long-haul planes. I noted then that Iberia runs long-haul planes on the Madrid to Heathrow route on certain days.

When I booked my Madrid flight, I didn’t actually bother to check the operating aircraft. It was only later that I realised it was due to be operated by an Airbus A330. Iberia is taking delivery of eight of these during 2013/4, and all will be equipped from Day 1 with Iberia’s new business class product.

I was therefore a happy man when I stepped on-board and saw this:

And my seat (4A):

and

Note that all seats have direct aisle access, which is something you don’t get with BA’s Club World seat.

The seat goes fully flat. It is not incredibly wide, and tapers even further at the foot end. However, it is certainly more than acceptable.

(The only weird thing is that the TV does not fold away. You are staring at it for the entire flight, whether you want to or not!)

Even better, Iberia was running a proper hot meal service. Get on a BA Club Europe plane departing at 15.55 and you’d get 2 scones, each the size of a 50p coin!

Iberia, on the other hand, was offering this (and even gave out proper menus, I have left in the spelling mistakes!):

Fresh leaves salad with cherry tomatoes and daikon turnip

Breaded veal loin or baked salmon with bearnase sauce

Idiazabal cheese with prune

Yoghourt and mango cake

Assorted bread basket, extra-virgin olive oil

Selection of wines, soft drinks and spirits

Coffee and herbal teas

And very tasty the salmon was too!

If you have never flown a long-haul fully-flat business class seat, then why not give this a go? The one-way ticket in Business Class is only 15,000 Avios. (Read here for why you should book via Iberia Plus to get lower taxes.)

Make sure you look for the Iberia operated flights, and click on the flight number during the booking process to see what aircraft it is. You want an A330 to be certain of the new seat.

The flight in the other direction could be booked cheaply for cash if you didn’t want to use too many Avios.

You would also get access to the Velazquez lounge in Terminal 4S at Madrid airport (there is a second lounge, I believe, but I didn’t pass it):

This also has a decent hot food selection (pasta, fish, chicken – why can’t BA serve sensible options like this which satisfy everyone?):

The upshot of this trip is that I will be more positive about flying Iberia going forward, especially when it comes to using them for long-haul redemptions, as long as you can guarantee to be getting an A330. I’m not sure at this point how long it will take for all of the A340’s to get the new fully-flat seats.

PS. I always pronounced Iberia as ‘eye-beer-ee-ar’. It turns out it should be ‘eye-berry-a’, listening to the onboard announcements ….