My wife and I went to Madrid last week to celebrate our wedding anniversary. The original idea was to make the journey part of the break — as we have been advocating in the Telegraph in our series Going Green. We would take the Eurostar to Paris and then an overnight train to Madrid, returning the same way. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find space on the return train at the time we wanted to book, so we ended up flying.

BA’s online check-in Quick and smooth in cyberspace; almost as quick and smooth at Heathrow airport.

BAA’s security Neither quick nor smooth. My wife, unused to the new restrictions on carrying liquids, bought a bottle of water just before we were about to go through security, and was told she would have to hand it over or take it back to the shop and ask for a refund. Why don’t the shops have big notices reminding passengers of this?
In the queue to our left, the security guard was insisting that everyone take off their shoes. People in our queue, hearing this, began to take off their shoes — only to be told by the guard at the head of our queue that they needn’t bother. And so it continued: passengers in one queue going through an arch shoeless while passengers in the neighbouring queue kept their shoes on. Tighter security is irritating; it’s even more irritating when it’s inconsistently enforced.

Arriving at Madrid The new airport terminal, designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership, is a wonderful building, and we loved the wave-form timbering of its roof. But we were given rather too much time to admire it. Between landing steps and taxi door we had a long walk, an escalator ride down, a train ride, and escalator ride up, and another long walk. And if there was a board indicating which carousel would have our luggage on it, it wasn’t big enough for us to see; we had to ask at two desks to find out. Nice building; shame about the way they run it.
Code-sharing This is the practice by which airlines put their brand, flight number and prices on flights actually operated by some other airline. We booked our outward and return journey through BA. Our email confirmation listed the return flight as BA7060. It also said, lower down — where I failed to notice it — “Operated by: IBERIA.” (Yes, travel writers should know better.)
On arriving at the airport for the flight home, we tried to use BA’s self-service machines, but the credit card with which I had paid for the flight was spat out. A member of BA staff pointed out that the flight was operated by Iberia and sent us to the Iberia machines. The card wouldn’t work there, either (why?), leading us to worry that we might not be booked on a return at all.
We had to join a very old-fashioned and lengthy check-in queue. Notices there told us that passengers now had to turn up no more than 45 minutes before their flight. If we had done that, we would just about have had time to reach the front of the check-in queue by the time the flight was leaving.
Once on board, we found that snacks and drinks — even bottles of water — which had been included in the service on BA, were charged as extras by Iberia. Again, in fairness to BA, there had been a warning about this at the bottom of the email confirmation. (Yes, yes, travel writers should know better.)
Now, let’s suppose I booked my BA flight not entirely on the basis of timing or cost but partly because I prefer BA’s service to Iberia’s. What do I do next time?