I've actually flown on them for three round-trips this year across the Atlantic, and I've come to the conclusion that there are only two reasons I fly them.
- First, I fly on them because it passes review by the policy police. They own a minority stake in my employer, and as such, offer a 50% discount for business class. Lufthansa is also a minority stakeholder, and also offers us a 50% discount, but won't confirm business class anymore for us. Instead, we get upgrades based on availability.
- Second, as they're a oneworld partner, they offer me elite points towards AA's loyalty program, and I don't consider myself as much a mileage whore as I am a status whore... I like the little black card I get to carry being at the top tier of AA's program. There's some degree of priority, and the occasional waiver of policy. The free upgrades are a nice add, but at the start of a trip, I'm really more interested in spending less time at a check-in or in security queue. The card brings me that. And I have to fly on AA and their partner airlines to keep that... so I fly Iberia.
In short,, I'm essentially a captive by our travel policy, and to a lesser degree, my preferred loyalty program.
In the past month, I've traveled twice to our offices in Nice, France on Iberia and Air Nostrom (their regional partner).
I've written many times before about their crappy signature "Nowhere Near Flat" seat. It's like sleeping in a second-hand thinly-padded recliner you'd find in a college dorm room.
And I don't care much for the food. Their wines are all Spanish, and can easily double as paint thinner or nail polish remover.
That's just the normal treatment. What was worse than normal this past two trips are two things I hold sacroscant -- operational dependability and service delivery.
Three of my four flights with IB were delayed, one somewhat severely in my book.
Last month, there was a brief delay on my ORD-MAD departure as they completed the security checks, and my return MAD-ORD flight returned to the terminal for a mechanical error, where the technicians spent an hour troubleshooting something.
That's all understandable. It happens, and they did a fair job of communicating this to everyone onboard.
Where service fell apart was on my most recent flights last week.
My departure from ORD was delayed for 2.5 hours. They had 8 hours notice this flight was going to be late (it was late departing Spain), and not only did I not get a phone call advising me, their website also wasn't updated with the delay. So being the good traveler that I am, I arrived 2.5 hours early, just to find out I had a 5 hour wait...
That just pissed me off to no end... There's only so much to do in O'Hare on a Saturday night...
To make matters worse, they've altered their schedules to a later departure, meaning a longer (as in six hours) connection at MAD to NCE. Trying to make lemons out of lemonade, I had arranged to meet a MAD based colleague and his wife for lunch. The delay shortened my connection at MAD just enough to make it impossible to make my lunch appointment. As such, I've still yet to see anything significant in MAD outside of of the airport...
So, off I went to wait in the Iberia lounge.
I inquired about using the showers, and was told they were closed for the day. They only have maid service up until 1200, and with the delay, we arrived at 1300. Not only did I miss out on a good lunch with friends, now I couldn't even feel somewhat refreshed before heading onward to NCE.
This is starting to be like clubbing baby seals... Time for something positive...
To their credit, IB upgraded the lounge earlier this year, and now have a self-serve buffet line. Morning offerings are eggs, meats, and cheese. Afternoon offerings included soup and some prepared sandwiches. They also have a "deli" with a selection of their intra-Europe BOB selections, including salads and sandwiches. The sandwiches selection is broad (tuna, egg salad, crab, ham with mayo, cream cheese, turkey, chicken), but three bites and they're gone...
They don't have free wifi like AA, CX and QF clubs, but they do offer PC's for use as well as a number of workstations with plug-in ethernet available, which is usually sufficient.
After checking mail, eating, it was time to head to the end of the main terminal for my NCE flight, which is a good 10-15 minute walk from the lounge.
Boarding time came and went without an announcement, and then at five minutes prior to departure, a new time was posted for an hour later. Again, no communication. Had it been posted as a delay, I could have remained in the confines of the lounge.
Instead, I was a half kilometer away in the general boarding area next to a death chamber (MAD has smoking areas which are partitioned off and pretend to suck up all the cancerous fumes, which I found didn't quite manage to get all of them..).
Aside from that, the service on Air Nostrum was great. They provide a recognizable meal on china, and have attentive staff. They're usually as reliable as AA in my opinion, and to be fair, this was the first delay I've had with them in three years.
By the time I arrived at my hotel, it was already 2030. I drove over to the neighboring village, bought a carry-out pizza, and ate in my hotel room before falling asleep to "The Quantum of Solice" (Judy Densch's voice is much, much deeper in French...).
My MAD-ORD flight home started out somewhat better, but not by much. Boarding at MAD was Iberia's trademark "Running of the Bulls", so I boarded well after the hundreds of people who ignore anything the gate agent announced had jammed up the jetway. Once onboard, I found the cabin to be about half full. With nobody sitting in the Zone B mini-cabin, I asked if I could move back. Three of us shared 12 seats. I'd flown over in the mini-cabin, and found it to be a nice change from Zone A. The seat motors are pretty noisy, so having fewer people in a smaller cabin meant less ambient noise in the cabin. Unfortuntately it was closer to the galley, but that was short lived noise as the flight attendants evaporated into thin air after the meal service...
At departure time, I recognized the mechanic frantically walking back and forth from the flight deck as the same mechanic from my ground interrupt at MAD four weeks earlier. It turned out they had to replace the video server for the IFE. Logbooks signed, we left about 40 minutes late.
As fate would have it, they didn't fix the system. Airborne, I had a choice of watching the main screen movie (a kids movie about talking hamsters), or listening to the Matsushita test track... Five hours to Chicago, and no IFE. So out comes the laptop, and that's why I'm writing this little essay.
To their credit, the cabin supervisor came by to explain the problem with the video system, and apologized for the failure. I will be curious to see if they do indeed reach out post-flight to offer an apology, but I'm not holding my breath.
