Barcelona Airport Flight Timing

We will be disembarking in Barcelona on October 1 (a Sunday) and I'm looking at a 10:40am flight out of BCN. Ship is scheduled to dock at 6:00am. I am assuming that we can disembark early, have a car pre-booked, and have plenty of time for a 10:40am (i.e. get there at least 2 hours early). I'm not familiar with BCN but if it matters for getting through immigration, we are traveling in business class. Would anyone have any concerns with this timing? I saw a similar thread in January for a 10:50am flight and the consensus then seemed to be no problem. I'm looking for some reassurance before booking. I understand that all of the standard disclaimers about things that can go wrong apply. Thanks for any help/reassurance.

If you leave the pier at 6ish and on a Sunday you'll be at the airport in less than 30'. There's no need to pre-book a car, there's a taxi rank at the pier with plenty of taxis, especially when ships dock. If anything I advise you to disembark early because I assume there'll be several hundred passengers in your same situation and while the taxi rank has a lot of taxis -there are 11000 in the city!- if all of you exit at the same time it might take a while to get one.

As per getting thru immigration... you're "flying out", not flying in, therefore I can't see why you need to pass thru immigration, do you? In any case, that'll be the case when you land wherever it is that you're going. To my knowledge you'll just be passing security control and passport control... and no, it doesn't matter what class you travel, over here we're very egalitarian so you'll be queuing in the same line than everybody else.

Or is it immigration "at the ship" you're referring to? There I can't help you sorry.

Thanks for the reply. Immigration was probably not the right thing to say. I was thinking, as you said, about passport control. I've left some countries where lines can get pretty long. Sounds like that shouldn't take too long?? For a few extra Euros, I'll probably book a car just to avoid the situation that you describe of hoards of people descending on a single taxi queue. Better safe than sorry.

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It shouldn't, on a Sunday at that early hours.

Highly interested in the airport logistics flow before we book cruise and air travel to Barcelona for Sep 2018. Still have time, but will use all feedback and trip reports for evaluating the day before or the day of cruise departure.

Following up with how BCN airport logistics worked for DaddyTinman and others who may be interested. We departed from Terminal 1. We flew Delta who had 10 check-in desks working...5 for Sky Priority and 5 for General check-in. The check-in agent asked some detailed questions about where we went, etc. that were designed to do a quick security check. I mention this because there was a separate thread on one of these boards where someone felt that these questions were intrusive and not appropriate for an airline employee to be asking. We knew this was coming and it was easy enough to just answer honestly. I think we confused our agent a bit by saying that we (my wife and myself) jointly packed our luggage. She was looking for a clear answer that one of us had packed and therefore can confirm had definitive control over everything that went into the suitcase.

After check-in, you go through security. We were flying in Business Class and were told that there was a separate security VIP line but lines were short enough that we never tried to find it and therefore can't confirm. There were probably 8 (maybe 10?) conveyor belts to run luggage through x-ray machines, with 2 belts sharing a single x-ray machine for people. People went through traditional x-ray machines, not the full body scanners. I'm not 100% certain, but I don't remember needing to remove my shoes.

After security comes passport control. Where you go through passport control depends if you are departing from an A, B, C, D, or E gate. If you are departing from Gates A, B, or C, you go down an escalator to a large area with many shops and restaurants. We walked around that area for a few minutes looking for the VIP Lounge. We didn't see the passport control area for the A/B/C gates but it is presumably past the shops area when you get closer to the gates. If you will spend time in this area eating or shopping, be sure to leave enough time to go through passport control when moving to your departure gate. We learned that the VIP lounge was upstairs on the same level as check-in and security, so we went back up the escalator. After going through security, passport control for D gates (and the lounge) is on the left, while passport control for E gates is on the right. We were leaving from gate E70 but went through the D gate passport control to access the lounge. There is a walkway connecting the D and E gates after passport control so you can presumably pick whichever side has the shorter line. The passport control agent looked at our boarding passes, checked our passports against his computer, stamped the passports, and we were through. No questions at all.

We were there early on a Sunday morning, so probably not typical, but the entire process of check-in, security, and passport control probably only took 30 minutes or so.

Hopefully this helps!

Thank you for the information! I booked a noon-ish flight for next summer and was a little concerned if that would be a tight time to get from the boat through everything at the airport. Feeling relieved now!! :)

Highly interested in the airport logistics flow before we book cruise and air travel to Barcelona for Sep 2018. Still have time, but will use all feedback and trip reports for evaluating the day before or the day of cruise departure.

We will be going in September of 2018. We have been talking about staying one night after the cruise to avoid rushing .

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I don't believe guessing time in passport control has any science behind it. Our flight landed in T2 in the middle of the day and it was the only flight (over 300 people). It cleared in about 30 min with 2 booths open

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