Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: American Double 2014
Flight Log 3: IB3302 (booked as BA7264)
Madrid (MAD) - Casablanca (CMN)
Although it may not seem much, this flight was notable for a couple of reasons. In the first place, although it was only a short hop in Economy, this was an intercontinental flight. And secondly, it was my first experience of Iberia, formerly Spain's national carrier and now having the same parent company as British Airways. We were among the first to board and had long since pre-selected exit row seats, leaving the middle seat empty (but available) to mimic a typical European Business Class layout, in the hope that the flight would not be full and nobody would choose that seat. At first it seemed as though the flight was only going to have a handful of passengers, but more eventually arrived until the point where the plane was perhaps just over half-full. Our gamble paid off: the middle seat (10E) remained unallocated!
We managed to get away a little ahead of schedule,
but surprisingly at this four-runway airport, we had to wait in a
queue for 36L. We took off at 1pm Spanish time and I set my watch
back to show noon, as Morocco shares the same time zone as the UK,
Ireland and Portugal. Cabin service in Economy was 'buy on board'.
Bruce had brought some Euros with him and paid for a little bottle
of Cava each, with which we could further enhance our illusion of
being on the other side of the curtain. It went down very nicely
indeed.
I could see Gibraltar off to the right and a short time thereafter we entered African airspace close to Tangier. The descent started shortly after one o'clock Morocco time as we continued on our heading towards Casablanca, a little further inland from the coast than I had anticipated. The seat belt signs came on fairly early due to turbulence. We landed in my second new country of 2014 at 1:30pm and were on-stand just three minutes later, well ahead of the scheduled arrival time.
 |
| Date: Fri 31 Oct 2014 |
| Aircraft: Airbus A319 |
| Scheduled dep: 1250 |
| Actual departure: 1246 |
| Scheduled arrival: 1345 |
| Actual arrival: 1333 |
| Cabin: Economy |
| Seat: 10F |