{"id":2322,"date":"2017-02-04T23:59:51","date_gmt":"2017-02-04T15:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/?p=2322"},"modified":"2017-08-20T07:47:31","modified_gmt":"2017-08-19T23:47:31","slug":"20170204fr7752","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/2017\/02\/04\/20170204fr7752\/","title":{"rendered":"Flight Log of Ryanair Flight 7752 from Madrid to Marrakech on February 4th, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally, when I was planning this trip to Europe, I was fascinated by photos showing majesty of imposing Sahara sand dunes and intricacy of century-old ancient city streets, that the North Africa country of Morocco presented to the world, which also recently exempted visas for Chinese visitors<\/del>. But with Morocco being in North Africa, which was a totally different fare zone in the airline charts than Europe, I hadn’t been able to find a satisfying price. Luckily, when I was searching connection opportunities through Europe, I bumped into the poorly-rated<\/del> budget carrier Ryanair, which offered quite competitive rates for flights to\/from the Moroccan cities of Marrakech and Fez.<\/p>\n

So with Qatar Airways’ offer of cheap flights to Spain, my friend and I decided to spend three days each in the two major Spanish cities of Madrid and Barcelona as “transitions” between home and Morocco. <\/p>\n

And now that we had visited the city of Madrid and its neighboring towns of Toledo and Segovia, we headed for the airport for our flight to Africa.<\/p>\n

\"Madrid<\/a>

<\/br>Madrid Airport Terminal 1 Interior<\/br>With Ryanair check-in Counters in the background.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n


\nThe images in this post are hosted on Imgur. Email me should there be any display problems.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ryanair operated on some pretty tight baggage-drop timelines, as their counter opens 2 hours before flight and closes 40 minutes. (Yes, we have two large trolley bags so the added baggage fees were catching up to the ticket itself. But since the flights are cheap, who cares?) (Maybe with some late-bag-drop fee they would let you do the bag-drop, another way for them to hike up revenues.)<\/del>
\nUnfortunately we encountered some problems on our way to the airport, as the Madrid Metro Line 8 that went all the way to airport T1\/2\/3 was closed for maintenance, and we weren’t aware of this until we reached Nuevos Ministerios Station, 2 hours before our flight. Luckily, there was still the suburb Renfe trains running to airport T4, after which an airport terminal shuttle bus resolved that issue as we reached the counters like 75 minutes before flight.<\/p>\n

\"Madrid<\/a>

<\/br>Madrid Airport Terminal 1 Interior<\/br>8 o\u2019clock wasn\u2019t a very popular time for departures at Madrid Airport.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

At the same time there was a China Eastern Airlines flight to Shanghai, and there were quite a lot of Chinese faces around us, all of which seemed to be doing tax refund, including the crew members.<\/p>\n

\"Chinese<\/a>

<\/br>Chinese Tourists and China Eastern Airlines Crew at Tax Refund<\/br>Yes, with crew from China Eastern Airlines mixed in the passengers. No wonder the Chinese carriers had terrible reputations for their services, as their crew members seemed to be caring more about their own duty-frees.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

As predicted by flightradar24, our flight was delayed as the previous flight never departed on time from Marrakech, and the 3 gate agents were running all over the place checking everyone’s hand baggage. <\/p>\n

\"Ryanair<\/a>

<\/br>Ryanair B738(EIEMM) At the Gate<\/br>Where the mighty stair-obsessing Ryanair succumbed to Spain airport\u2019s regulatory mandate use of jet bridges, quite a scene.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

When it’s finally boarding time, the lines only inched forward, which was quite foreseeable as everyone seemed to be walking around the cabin fighting over spaces to put their bags, with the background music of loud bickering and cursing as the three gate agents mercilessly found their prey of “slightly oversized” baggage with only their bare eyes.<\/p>\n

\"Air<\/a>

<\/br>Air India B788 (VT-ANU) Arriving<\/br>With Star Alliance livery.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Nothing much to talk about the aircraft, 6-year-old Boeing 738 without sky-interior, the only merit of which was more overhead baggage space (let there be fight). No, that poor victim of Ryanair’s gate agents never made it to the plane.<\/p>\n

\"Lights<\/a>

<\/br>Lights of Madrid Airport Terminal 4<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Lights<\/a>

<\/br>Lights of Madrid Airport Terminal 4S<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Business<\/a>

<\/br>Business Jet Apron of Madrid Airport<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Town<\/a>

<\/br>Town of Torrej\u00f3n de Ardoz and Highway into Madrid<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Town<\/a>

<\/br>Town of Torrej\u00f3n de Ardoz and Highway into Madrid<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

There were thick clouds not long into the flight, so there weren’t much pictures to offer of the views within Spain.
\nThe whole cabin service<\/del> sale included food and drinks, perfume (multiple rounds) and lottery scratch card. There were so many to offer that the crew turned off the safety-belt sign at, I recall, 2800 meters? (It must be below 3000 meters, and I don’t know whether this is fine with international regulations.)<\/p>\n

Just before descent, our chatty capitan invited those who sat on the right side to look out for the famous city of Casablanca, and those on the left like me, some nameless Moroccan hamlet.<\/p>\n

\"Ben<\/a>

<\/br>Ben Guerir<\/p><\/div>\n

Before landing, we caught some glimpse of the city of Marrakech, the heartland of Moroccan Kingdom until the movie Casablanca.<\/p>\n

\"City<\/a>

<\/br>City of Marrakech in the Distance<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Lights<\/a>

<\/br>Lights of Marrakech Suburb<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

With some tricks of Ryanair’s random seat allocation algorithm<\/a>, I managed to secure a front-row seat on the flight, which made my friend and I one of the first to leave the aircraft.<\/p>\n

\"Leaving<\/a>

<\/br>Leaving Ryanair B738(EIEMM)<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Ryanair<\/a>

<\/br>Ryanair B738(EIEMM) with Front Stairs Deployed<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Hoping to avoid queues at the immigration (which many people complained about), and hoping to catch the last bus out of the airport at 11pm (which was severely dashed by the flight delay), we were rushing our way through the apron to immigration.<\/p>\n

\"Marrakech<\/a>

<\/br>Marrakech Airport Terminal Exterior<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Two<\/a>

<\/br>Two Ryanair Planes at Marrakech Airport<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Marrakech<\/a>

<\/br>Marrakech Airport International Arrival Hall<\/br>Just before immigration, where everyone must fill out arrival cards.<\/span><\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Then there was the worst part of the day, as Marrakech Airport offered us arrival cards to be filled but no pens to fill them. It took my friend quite some time to find a pen in his backpack (while he wasn’t aware he brought a pen all the way), as everyone else was filling their cards and borrowing pens from each other.
\nBy the time we were done with our boarding cards, there was already quite a sizeable queue at the immigration. To vent my anger, I used the airport’s free WiFi (the only thing good) and crafted some terrible remarks towards the Airport’s twitter account, only to find out they hadn’t got one.
\nWell, I know why they rated AirAsia as the world’s best budget carrier, at least they got boarding cards and pens onboard on my flight to Phnom Penh from Kuala Lumpur. <\/p>\n

After that dreadful with Moroccan immigration (and their arrival cards in particular), we exchanged small amounts of Moroccan Dirhams for the taxi ride to hotel (the rates were much better than Madrid), and headed out.<\/p>\n

\"Marrakech<\/a>

<\/br>Marrakech Airport Male Bathroom<\/br>Decorated in a very Arabic way, even with its own Wudu areas.<\/span><\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Marrakech<\/a>

<\/br>Marrakech Airport Interior<\/br>Colorfully decorated with geometric shapes.<\/span><\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Marrakech<\/a>

<\/br>Marrakech Airport Interior<\/br>Colorfully decorated with geometric shapes.<\/span><\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Marrakech<\/a>

<\/br>Marrakech Airport Arrival Hall<\/br>It seemed that all those people waiting here were drivers waiting for specific pickups, rather than taxi touts.<\/span><\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

By the time we exited the airport, it was like 2 past 11pm and we gave up on the bus. After some harsh negotiations with the taxi drivers we talked the price of a petti taxi down to 100 Dirhams, and headed for the Medina.
\nTip: There were lots of taxis waiting at the parking lot, only a small number at the arrival. I guess there was some sort of “head of taxis” that dictated where taxis should be, and take cuts from the taxi fares.<\/span>
\nWhile in Medina, OpenStreetMap was much useful than Google Maps. After several seemingly-dead-ends and narrow turns, we were at our hotel \/ riad, and called it a day.
\nEND<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally, when I was planning this trip to Europe, I was fascinated by photos showing majesty of imposing Sahara sand dunes and intricacy of century-old ancient city streets, that the North Africa country of Morocco presented to the… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,3,2],"tags":[205],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2322"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2322"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2653,"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2322\/revisions\/2653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}