Iberia Airlines: Santo Domingo to Madrid

[malko]

that's because they just started again few days ago i traveled with them few times and had no complains about the aircraft itself. hey, it looks like a plane and it flies, it's a plane. sure as hell they did not have 2013 and 2014 models back then thou because it was 2010 or so.

Oh. It seemed to me santobonao arrived on iberia on the "miami". My bad.

 

[MiamiDRGuy]

I saw this IBERIA plane yesterday when I was heading back to Miami, the plane itself is new and its hell big, they carried 11 carbo boxes and 8 cargo and 7 baggage cars total and so meone told me that plane was carrying almost 200 people (a sold out plane). Picture of this plane:

 

[Kipling333]

I would not be knocking Igeria with their new planes and new seats in business class and less than 10 hours to Madrid and if you want to go to London you can use Airfrance with connections or BA from Punta Cana to Gatwick ..It is wonderful that we do not have to transit in any of the appalling american airports ..Actually we only lack a direct service to Jamaica which I find amazing for tourists who may want to our neighbouring tourist island

 

[dv8]

from tomorrow iberia will be flying daily: Iberia comienza ma?ana vuelos diarios a Rep?blica Dominicana - DiarioLibre.com

 

[JerryLowell]

from tomorrow iberia will be flying daily: Iberia comienza ma?ana vuelos diarios a Rep?blica Dominicana - DiarioLibre.com

Has anyone taken one of these flights recently? If so, what was your opinion of the airplane and the service?

 

[Bryanell]

Has anyone taken one of these flights recently? If so, what was your opinion of the airplane and the service?

I flew coach SDQ/MAD/SDQ a couple of weeks ago. Plane was new, cabin crew was good, flight was quick and smooth. Only the food was not so good, but where in coach is it any good these days. I especially liked the full size cans of beer, the "help yourself" galley service, water, juice, munchies.....and extra wine if you didn't push too hard. Definitely an improvement on the old service....................

 

[Carabum]

Flying from Madrid with Iberia I think is 2 hours less flying time than coming from Frankfurt with Condor, yet Condor is way cheaper than Iberia.

 

[Riva_31]

British now has direct flights to Punta Cana too, Santo Domingo needs some of those flights at least one a week and conect with Toronto or Montreal and other countries.

 

[dv8]

i need some more direct flights from POP to europe, who cares about SD... :dead:

 

[rubio_higuey]

Iberia, Air Europa etc. are mainly business airlines, thus flights mainly to SD.
Condor, Air Berlin, Eurowings etc. are mainly leisure airlines, thus flights mainly to PUJ/POP.

I do not want to get into airline economics here, but in a nutshell the two airlines have a completely different cost structure, Condor is an LCC, so as a result of lower unit cost it has lower price than Iberia which is a full service carrier and has substantially higher unit cost (CASK/CASM).

 

[josh2203]

Flying from Madrid with Iberia I think is 2 hours less flying time than coming from Frankfurt with Condor, yet Condor is way cheaper than Iberia.

I compared these two prices a couple of years ago, Iberia was more than double the price of Condor, now just checked again, nothing much has changed. Yet I have never had any complaints regarding Condor service (on board / airport), so apart from what they might charge for SDQ airport use, not sure why the difference... Also quoting dv8 there above, departures from SDQ don?t interest me that much...

 

[josh2203]

Iberia, Air Europa etc. are mainly business airlines, thus flights mainly to SD.
Condor, Air Berlin, Eurowings etc. are mainly leisure airlines, thus flights mainly to PUJ/POP.

I do not want to get into airline economics here, but in a nutshell, Condor is an LCC, so it has lower price than Iberia which is a full service carrier.

I might be missing something here, but as I posted above, having been a loyal customer of Condor, I don?t see which service I?m missing with them (for them being a low cost carrier). I do know that their core business is charter/leisure flights, so yes, you are right with this fact (and they state officially as well being a LCC, I know), but I have also used plenty of "normal" airlines (Lufthansa, Air France, American Airlines to name a few), and I see no difference in the service I receive from them (unless it has something to do with alcohol serviced on board, which service I have never used...)?

 

[dv8]

air berlin is a regular airline. for years i have been travelling with them as i need comfort and security of traveling with the same carrier within eirope as well. condor... i would not even know where to look for a flight POP-berlin with them...

 

[josh2203]

air berlin is a regular airline. for years i have been travelling with them as i need comfort and security of traveling with the same carrier within eirope as well. condor... i would not even know where to look for a flight POP-berlin with them...

I think Condor mainly focuses on outbound-flights from and to Europe, so less destinations within Europe (apart from the vacation destinations). Currently I believe the hubs they use in Germany include to two largest airports, Frankfurt and Munich, so flying with them to Berlin would be impossible.

 

[dv8]

for years this is my big issue with travel to europe. i often travel for xmas when tickets are generally more costly. i'm fine with connecting flight but i need to know i will not be stranded at the airport if my plane happens to be late or cancelled. which is why i book the same carrier. once i was traveling with air france and damn frog eaters were on strike. the plane arrived to SD late and left late. i missed my connecting flight in paris. it was a day before xmas. the managed to fit me on the next flight to berlin but just that one ticket alone was sh*t expensive if i had to pay for it from my own pocket. this problem is even more pressing now,when i travel with air berlin because they only fly to POP once a week (off season). so if i miss that flight, oops.

anyways, iberia. i used to travel with them few years ago. i never had complains save for the fact that on the flight within europe there would always be someone with extreme case of body odour. every. single. time. wtf. wash, people, wash!

 

[rubio_higuey]

I might be missing something here, but as I posted above, having been a loyal customer of Condor, I don?t see which service I?m missing with them (for them being a low cost carrier). I do know that their core business is charter/leisure flights, so yes, you are right with this fact (and they state officially as well being a LCC, I know), but I have also used plenty of "normal" airlines (Lufthansa, Air France, American Airlines to name a few), and I see no difference in the service I receive from them (unless it has something to do with alcohol serviced on board, which service I have never used...)?

- Seat Assignment
- Onboard carry on bag weight limitation
- Checked bag weight limitation

Their model is based on selling bulk (60-80%) of capacity to tour operators, so they know months in advance how their flights are booked. Of course, the prices German TTOOs pay are much lower than if you boo direct with Condor, but you cannot buy just the flight ticket with TTOO it must be packaged.

Anyway, after they know their main loads, they will release the remainder of tickets for sale to public via GDS, travel agents, and their own website/call center.

The LCC designation comes more from airline economics and how they work economically internally than from a product you receive from them. JetBlue and Virgin America are LCCs yet they offer better service than legacy carriers.

Even within LCC world (which again has more to do with internal airline economics rather than a hard or soft product they offer) there is a subdivision, now basically "hybrid LCCs" such as Jetblue and VA, and UltraLCC (ULCC) such as Spirit, frontier, Allegiant. With HLCCs you do not see much difference in rad and soft product between them and legacies, with the exception of missing business/first class, while with ULCCs you see a substantial difference in both hard and soft product (tighter seats, no onboard service, basically everything is for purchase such as priority boarding, seat assignments, meals, drinks, etc.).

 

[rubio_higuey]

air berlin is a regular airline. for years i have been travelling with them as i need comfort and security of traveling with the same carrier within eirope as well. condor... i would not even know where to look for a flight POP-berlin with them...

Air Berlin is a torn airline between LCC and full service airline. It is a hybrid that works awfully bad. Completely mismanaged airline surviving on subsidies from it's shareholder Etihad. They have network service, but their mentality is stuck between leisure LCC and full service network carrier.

You can book with Condor all the way to Poland, they hand over pax to Lufthansa in FRA/MUC. You can book via their website or via travel agent who has access to GDS such as Amadeus.

 

[dv8]

i am not interested in flying to poland, only to berlin.

i checked condor site. their internal european flight is with air berlin not much difference in price i pay with AB either. but i will keep them in mind as an alternative.

 

[josh2203]

- Seat Assignment
- Onboard carry on bag weight limitation
- Checked bag weight limitation

Their model is based on selling bulk (60-80%) of capacity to tour operators, so they know months in advance how their flights are booked. Of course, the prices German TTOOs pay are much lower than if you boo direct with Condor, but you cannot buy just the flight ticket with TTOO it must be packaged.

Anyway, after they know their main loads, they will release the remainder of tickets for sale to public via GDS, travel agents, and their own website/call center.

The LCC designation comes more from airline economics and how they work economically internally than from a product you receive from them. JetBlue and Virgin America are LCCs yet they offer better service than legacy carriers.

Even within LCC world (which again has more to do with internal airline economics rather than a hard or soft product they offer) there is a subdivision, now basically "hybrid LCCs" such as Jetblue and VA, and UltraLCC (ULCC) such as Spirit, frontier, Allegiant. With HLCCs you do not see much difference in rad and soft product between them and legacies, with the exception of missing business/first class, while with ULCCs you see a substantial difference in both hard and soft product (tighter seats, no onboard service, basically everything is for purchase such as priority boarding, seat assignments, meals, drinks, etc.).

You seem to know this stuff, that was actually an interesting read

As I think Condor is part of the British Thomas Cook / TUI, I suppose this kind of business model was to be expected.

Now that you mentioned those three key differences, there might actually be differences, but those have never affected me as a passenger. If you are looking for an economic ticket with tourist class seat and 21kg/5kg luggage allowance, I suppose there?s not much difference.

Not sure if this is typical for a LCC, but I noticed last year, that on the peak times Condor does lease aircrafts from this American company called Omni Air. It was called "wet lease", meaning that only thing that comes from Condor is the flight code. Staff on board was American (if I recall right, the German announcements were recordings, not sure anymore) and the aircraft was clearly branded "Omni Air by Condor". I was surprised to see that these leased aircrafts were in fact in a much better shape than those 767s that are native from Condor (at least the ones we flew with). The service was excellent as well.

 

[rubio_higuey]

Yes they do wet lease in the summer from Omni from mid June to September. But I thought the cabin staff was from Condor because that's what their Facebook said to some customer complaints last year about OMNI. Germans actually did not like that they did not fly on Condor. Anyway most flights of Condor off season are operated by Thomas Cook Airlines which is a sister company to Condor. Internally aircraft is branded as Condor and outside some have Condor paint and some not. Last time I flew Condor "Condor" was about 4 years ago, since then they used Thomas Cook for all DR flying. Condor actually finished refurbishment of their hard product on their own 767s which now have PTVs and USB ports and lie flat seats in Business. Thomas Cook only has overhead monitors, same as Omni, so if flying with Condor from and to the DR, invest in a 20 dollar battery bank and load up your SD card with movies and games.

As a final note, Condor is part of Thomas Cook Group which is NOT affiliated to TUI (that's Thomson). Condor was owned by Lufthansa and they sold it back some years back to Thomas Cook. You can actually still accrue Miles and More miles on Condor flights. Now Lufthansa found out that leisure market is not bad at all and they set up new leisure airline under Euro wings brand. But Eurowings long haul will be operated by Sun Airlines Germany, which is a joint venture of Lufthansa and Sun Airlines, Sun Airlines is a subsidiary of Turkish Airlines. So you may well see Turkish pilots flying Eurowings planes to the Caribbean from Germany.

One more thing, Condor offers Premium Economy with 34 inch seat pitch, better meal, 5 kg more baggage allowance for checked bag and some kilos more for carry on, with assigned seating and priority boarding. Usually at the last moment the fare difference may not be too high and up sell is possible. I have seen people buying Premium Economy upgrade which was cheaper than excess weight baggage charge.

Last time I flew with Condor fares went down and Premium Economy was cheaper by a few dollars than my originally purchased regular Economy ticket. I spotted the difference and called their call enter and was upgraded at no additional charge with no change fee. I really liked that. They even apologized that they would not be able to refund 7 dollar difference between then premium economy fare and my original regular economy fare. I just told them I was happy with the "free" upgrade and to forget about the difference.