Iberia A330 Economy Class Review: JFK-MAD

Rating: 5/5 (can’t beat it for the price)

Price: 18,700 Iberia avios + ~$50 in taxes and fees.

As true to the title of this blog, I managed to secure the exit row on my flight out to Madrid. Better yet – they didn’t charge for this and let me select these for free. Hopefully Iberia revenue management isn’t reading this…

For this flight, I paid for 37,400 Iberia avios transferred from Chase for two economy tickets. This shakes out to 18,700 points per person plus around 50 bucks in taxes and fees each. Not bad for a nonstop transatlantic flight.

The block time for this flight is a relatively quick 7 hours.

I was trying to find the Iberia plane, but upon boarding realized we were on Level-livery A330. The plane inside is identical to Iberia’s other A330s.

The A330 is my favorite (other than the 767) plane to fly on when traveling with someone in economy, because you are guaranteed to be able to sit next to them with no one else bothering you. Business class on this plane is in a staggered 1-2-1 configuration. Economy is in a 2-4-2 configuration. For today’s flight, I had the exit row seat 21L.

The legroom on the right is partially blocked by the exit row, but still much better than regular economy.

Also, the economy class bathrooms are towards the rear of the aircraft, so the only bothersome thing up in the exit row is galley noise, which was totally fine throughout the flight.

The crew on this flight was a highlight. Super friendly and went out of their way to help me. For example, I boarded almost dead last so all bins were filled up, so they actually guided me up to business class and let me put my bags there. If only I got to sit there too…maybe next time.

Food was also pretty good on this flight. Minus the corn salad thing. That wasn’t very good.

In flight entertainment was also very good. One thing to be aware of in the exit row is that the screen swivels out since there’s no seat in front of you, and the screen is definitely smaller. I still think a fair tradeoff for having great legroom on a 7 hour flight.

After watching some movies (shoutout Elvis), we were already approaching Madrid. For a pre-arrival snack, I had a classic Jamon sandwhich. This was actually really good, honestly as good as some of the ones I had on the ground.

All in all, a quick and easy flight to Madrid, would definitely choose Iberia again in the future.