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I am flying to Tokyo on October 30th through Madrid with Iberia. My flight is at 11:55am from Madrid in business class.
I am considering booking the BA flight from London at 6:15am landing in Madrid at 9:45am in the same Terminal 4.
Only concern is if my flight is delayed from London. Am I being too optimistic here? Should I just go the night before and spend the night in a hotel in Madrid. In case things go wrong, do I have any protections or not because they are completely separate bookings? I’d rather avoid staying in Madrid on the outbound because I will have to spend a night there anyway on the way back because of the timing of the flights back to London.Thanks!
With separate bookings you have zero legal protections.
Plus any bags won’t be checked through either so you’d have to enter Spain, collect your bags and then check-in again all before the IB check in cut off.
Go the night before.
That is very high risk if you are hand baggage only, and near impossible with checked luggage – even if things go well. You have zero contingency and no possible plan B.
Is the Tokyo booking through BA on avios? If so, if there’s avios availability on the LHR-MAD flight you should be able to add it to your existing booking, at the cost of a change fee. Your bags would then be checked through and your connection protected.
Otherwise, go the day before.
Doesn’t matter what you’d rather not do – there are substantial risks here that you need to mitigate by leaving ample room for contingency plans; I wouldn’t even book the very last flight of the previous day to Madrid! It’s not a crack of dawn flight onwards so just book a decent hotel for the evening somewhere with fairly easy travel and enjoy the experience.
The day before is advisable or at least six hours between flights if late afternoon/evening/night departure.
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