Which terminal am I in at Madrid-Barajas?

Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas has four terminals and they are a long way apart. Getting it wrong is not a minor inconvenience: T1 and T4 are about 10 kilometres apart by road.

Here is what you need to know so it does not catch you out.

First: check your boarding pass

Obvious, but it is the only reliable source. Airlines move terminals, sometimes seasonally and sometimes from one year to the next, so any published list goes stale. Your boarding pass and the Aena website have the current answer.

Quick trick: type your flight number into Google — just like that, IB3105 — and the card at the top of the results gives you the departure and arrival terminals along with the flight status. It works for any airline and updates when things change.

And if you would rather not check it yourself, send us the flight number on WhatsApp and we will tell you the terminal. We look it up before every pickup anyway.

That said, there are some rules of thumb worth knowing.

The rules of thumb

T4 and T4S are home to Iberia and its alliance partners. If you are flying Iberia, Iberia Express, Air Nostrum, or partners such as British Airways, American Airlines, Qatar Airways or Latam, you are almost certainly at T4.

T1 handles much of the non-alliance long haul and many low-cost carriers: Ryanair, some Air Europa routes, and a good number of Asian and Middle Eastern airlines.

T2 and T3 are smaller, adjacent terminals handling domestic and European flights. T3 is barely used for boarding these days.

The T4S detail that catches people out

T4S is a separate building from T4, reachable only by an automated underground train that takes about four minutes.

Here is the thing:

• On departure, you check in and clear security at T4, then take the train to T4S if your gate is there. It is part of the normal flow — nothing special to do.
• On arrival, if you land at T4S you take the train to T4 and collect your luggage there. T4S has no exit to the street of its own.

So if you are meeting a taxi after landing at T4S, the meeting point will always be T4. Nobody can pick you up at T4S.

Moving between terminals

Route	How	Time
T4 ↔ T4S	Internal automated train	~4 min
T1 ↔ T2 ↔ T3	On foot through internal corridors	5–15 min
T1/T2/T3 ↔ T4	Free inter-terminal bus	15–20 min, plus waiting

The inter-terminal bus runs every few minutes, but once you add the wait, the ride and the walk to the stop, budget a good half hour. If you have to change terminals for a connection, do not cut it fine.

What this means for your transfer

If a taxi is meeting you, the terminal matters for two reasons.

The first is obvious: it is where they wait. The second is that the car parks and pickup areas differ by terminal, so the meeting point is agreed beforehand, not improvised on arrival.

With us the point is confirmed by WhatsApp before you land, and if your flight arrives at T4S we already assume the meeting happens at T4.

The fare does not change: a flat €33 between any terminal and anywhere inside the M-30, whichever one you land at.