Iberia Business Class

We had a four day mini-vacation in Spain, Andorra and France, on Finnair flights. Except that the Finnair flights turned out to be operated by Iberia. Apparently Finnair is wet leasing the Helsinki-Barcelona route flights from Iberia. So, Finnair tickets, lounges, and system, but Iberia service. We managed to upgrade ourselves on one leg of this trip using points that would have expired otherwise.

Business class was quite good. I think slightly better service than on Finnair; more or less the same otherwise but we had a choice of two different meals. Fish or beef, and also the salad and dessert were quite nice. Well done.

Pre-meal:

Meal:

Plane:

Airport:

I was also very happy with the lounge at Terminal 1, the Pau Casals VIP Lounge on the Schengen side. Excellent offerings, typical breakfast foods and all kinds of drinks but also hot dogs. Quiet, spacious lounge. At least on a Sunday between 8 and 9am...

An odd thing at the Barcelona airport was that as you enter the airport, there's several directions for the different checkins in Terminal 1, but no displays that would tell you which flights are where. And if you try to find out from the airport website, the departures list gives you only a partial list of flights, and to see more you have to press "Next" which actually takes you to installing some app that I clearly didn't want. 

And the airport WiFi seemed to be blocking HTTPS in some cases, or perhaps someone was attacking it. Not good either.

Another interesting fact about the Barcelona airport is that it is infested with pickpockets and thieves. I though I was pretty good at monitoring such situations, but as we were packing our rental car, I was momentarily alone and someone attempted to come talk to me with a clear scam in mind, I thought I got him to go away but at the same time his partner apparently took a backpack from our car. Fortunately he took the empty one... and he was spotted by rental agency agent as he was putting the empty pack to our trolley. Phew. Please be careful, and take the rental car agent's warnings very seriously. We were warned about pickpockets in the garage and still I failed to monitor my surroundings. Or keep the car locked except for the door that I was using for loading it.

Spain and Barcelona and Iberia and airport lounge great - pickpockets not so great. Or airport website designers...

For more flying stories, check out the planetflier.com website! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.