I nearly missed my flight out of Madrid because of a train. I wasn’t the only one standing there wondering if I was going to make it.

What Most Travellers Don’t Know About T4

Madrid Barajas Airport has two separate terminal areas and they are not connected by a walkway. Terminal 4, which handles Iberia and a number of international departures, sits apart from the main terminal complex. To get between them you take an internal automated train. It takes a few minutes under normal conditions.

Normal conditions are not guaranteed.

What Actually Happened

The train went down. When it stopped, everything around it stopped with it. Escalators locked. Lifts became unavailable. Security personnel moved to block access points while the situation was assessed. Passengers crowded in an enclosed space in the heat with no information coming through. When announcements did come, they were in Spanish only.

At some point someone fainted on the train. I stood on a stopped escalator for at least half an hour waiting for an update that never arrived through official channels. The information vacuum was its own kind of stress on top of the physical situation.

I was flying Iberia to Casablanca and I made it, but the margin was not comfortable. There were passengers around me who likely did not.

What This Means for Your Planning

The standard advice of arriving 90 minutes before a flight works at airports where the infrastructure between you and your gate is reliable. Madrid T4 adds a dependency that most travellers don’t account for because they don’t know it exists until they’re standing in front of the train platform.

If you are departing from Terminal 4 or connecting through it, build in more time than feels necessary. Two hours minimum, more if you’re checking bags or have any reason to expect queues at security. The train itself is quick when it runs. The problem is that when it doesn’t, the backup has no obvious solution and the airport’s communication during the incident I experienced was close to nonexistent.

Travel friction doesn’t always come from the obvious places. Sometimes it’s a train between two parts of the same airport that nobody mentioned in the booking confirmation.

Have you been caught out by airport infrastructure? Comment below with your experience. Follow 5 Star Trip for more ways to anticipate and avoid travel friction before it costs you a flight.