Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas taxi, and the fare the city already fixed.

What we promise, and what we do not

We promise the figure is agreed before you travel and does not change afterwards; that the driver waits inside the arrivals hall of the terminal you actually land at, with your surname on a board; and that the pickup is set against the aircraft’s real landing time. We do not promise to beat the rank into the centre, because the city’s flat fare is genuinely good and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.

Where a booking earns its keep at this airport

Three places. Outside the M-30, where the flat fare stops and the meter starts. At T4 and T4S, where the terminal you land in is two kilometres from the one you might have expected. And on anything with luggage, a group, a child seat or a 02:00 landing, where the queue rather than the fare is the problem.

What is inside the figure

The car and the driver. The terminal car-park charge incurred collecting you. The flight tracking that sets your pickup. 60 minutes of waiting measured from touchdown. Any child seat you ask for. Any road toll the route genuinely incurs. That is the list, and there is nothing underneath it.

Reading this table

The rows marked with the flat-fare tag fall inside the M-30, so a rank taxi charges a reported €33.00 whatever the distance or the hour. Every other row is metered, which is where the figure stops being predictable and an agreed price starts to matter.

What the drive times assume

Ordinary running conditions on the A-2 and the M-30. Add ten to twenty minutes in the morning and evening peaks, on a Bernabéu or Metropolitano match day, and across the big IFEMA weeks. The slow part is almost never the motorway; it is the last kilometre into a central street.

Where our own figure comes from

The booking page, for your actual route, vehicle and party size, shown before you pay and then held. We have not published a fare board for Madrid on this page. The rank column below is the city tariff, which is public; our own figure is worked out for your actual route, vehicle and party size on the booking page and shown before you pay.

The meeting point, precisely

Inside the terminal you actually land at, in the public arrivals hall past baggage reclaim. Not the kerb, not the car park, not the departures level. At an airport with two separate buildings, the terminal is the whole of the problem, which is why we take it from your flight number rather than asking you to supply it.

Reaching your driver if something is wrong

There is a number for the journey printed on your confirmation; ring it while you are still indoors, where there is signal and somewhere to stand. The mobile number we ask for at booking is the other half of that: it is how the driver reaches you when the aircraft is parked on a remote stand and the walk in takes twenty minutes, or when your bags surface on a belt in a different hall.

A delayed, diverted or cancelled flight

A delay needs nothing from you at all. The booking is tied to your flight number, so the pickup time follows the aircraft rather than the timetable it has already missed. Free waiting runs 60 minutes from the wheels touching down, and 90 if your luggage has not travelled with you; past that the charge is CONFIRM: the waiting charge after the free period. A diversion gets re-planned, not invoiced, and a cancelled flight moves the booking instead of losing it.

If your terminal changes

Airlines move flights between terminals, sometimes late. Tell us and we move the driver at no charge. It is the one change at this airport that costs nothing and causes the most trouble when nobody mentions it.

What the Spanish rule actually says

Spanish rules require an approved restraint, and a child of 135 cm or under must travel in the rear seats whatever their age. Rank taxis rarely carry one. That last point is the practical one at the rank: a family landing at T4 with a two-year-old has no realistic way of knowing whether the next cab in line carries anything suitable. On a booking it is settled in advance and costs nothing. Tell us the ages and rough weights when you book, not at the kerb, so the right seat is fitted rather than the closest one to hand. Our child car seat guide for airport transfers sets out the types and the law at more length. CONFIRM: the exact weight and height bands of the seats we stock

Animals, and which of them we can take

An assistance dog travels free every time, with no notice needed beyond a word at booking so the journey goes to a driver expecting one. Anything else is still open: CONFIRM: whether we carry pets other than assistance dogs, whether a carrier is required, any charge, and whether the animal counts as a passenger Where an animal does travel, be aware it eats into the vehicle’s stated capacity rather than riding alongside it.

Wheelchairs, folding and not

A chair that folds goes in the boot of any class on the table, free, with no notice at all. A rigid frame or a powered chair is a different booking: the accessible vehicle, 48 hours ahead, and we need the make, the measurements and the weight, because a ramp has a limit. Assistance through the terminal itself is not ours to give — that is Aena’s Sin Barreras, arranged through your airline, reported as wanting at least 48 hours.

Fairs, sierra kit and anything that will not sit on a lap

None of this moves the figure. All of it moves the vehicle. An IFEMA load is quoted off dimensions rather than a count of boxes, and a winter run up to Navacerrada is quoted off the number of ski and board bags, which is the number people forget.

A coach cannot be re-let in an afternoon

Cancel a saloon and it is back on the road within the hour. Cancel a 16-seater or a coach and a vehicle that was standing idle for you has lost its day, which is the whole reason the free window widens as the vehicle does. Rather than print one figure that would be wrong for two of the three, the table sets out each size separately.

Why these numbers are on the page at all

Because "free waiting" and "free cancellation" mean nothing without the minutes and the deadline attached, and a sentence without them is marketing wearing a policy’s clothes. What is above is the policy itself. Where we are still waiting on a figure it says so in plain sight, which looks worse on the page and is better for the reader than a smooth phrase covering a gap.

Changing something after you have paid

Flights get renumbered, terminals get swapped, trips get cut short. Send the change and the job moves with it. Where the change touches the route, the class of vehicle or the number of people, it is re-priced first and you decide whether to accept the new figure — nothing is quietly re-rated after the journey has happened.

The names and codes, settled

The airport’s full name is Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport. It is also written Aeropuerto Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas in Spanish, shortened to Madrid-Barajas, and called simply Madrid Airport by almost everyone. The IATA code on your ticket is MAD; the ICAO code on the flight plan is LEMD. All of these are the same single airport.

How big, in context

A reported 68,179,054 passengers in 2025 makes it the busiest airport in Spain and Europe's fifth-busiest by passengers. It opened on 22 April 1931 and was renamed after Adolfo Suárez in 2014. For a transfer the size matters in one practical way: reclaim and the walk out of a terminal both take longer than people allow for.

Is there another Madrid airport?

Not for scheduled passenger flights. Cuatro Vientos and Torrejón handle general aviation and military traffic. If you hold a ticket to Madrid, you are landing at MAD.

Count the cases, then the people

Every vehicle on this table runs out of boot before it runs out of belts. A saloon has four seats and room for two large cases; put a case beside each of four adults and you are in an estate. A people carrier shows six seats and four large cases, which in practice is a family of five with a pushchair rather than six colleagues with six cases. Book from the case count and the class is almost always right first time.

Madrid-specific loads

Two things come up here constantly. Trade-fair weeks at IFEMA bring stands, samples and cases that are nothing like holiday luggage, so give dimensions rather than a box count. And the sierra runs all winter, which means ski and board bags on a road that climbs.

Above sixteen

A 30-seater or 50-seater coach rather than a convoy of cars, so the party arrives together. Both need 48 hours’ notice and have a longer free cancellation window, because the vehicle is held for you.

Two parties, and which one you are paying

Your money and your contract go to QMH Technologies Ltd, a company on the register of England and Wales under number 13506378, trading as Global Airport Taxi. The car that turns up at your terminal belongs to someone else: a licensed operator in Madrid. That split is not a loophole, it is the law — a Madrid taxi licence is issued by the Ayuntamiento and a VTC authorisation by the Spanish state, and neither can be held from a London address.

Getting hold of a human being

Two routes, both staffed: bookings@globalairporttaxi.com for anything written down, and WhatsApp on +44 20 3002 9040 for anything happening now. On the day itself use the WhatsApp number — it is quicker, and it leaves a thread we can both read back. Once you are in the building, the number printed on your confirmation goes to the journey rather than to an inbox.

The gap we have left visible

The operator registration a few lines above says CONFIRM instead of a number. We could have put a plausible-looking string there and almost nobody would have checked. A licence number is precisely the field on a page like this that has to be real or absent, so it is absent, and it stays absent until the operator sends it.

Whose numbers these are

The €33.00 and the four tariffs belong to the Ayuntamiento de Madrid and have applied since 1 January 2026. Passenger counts, terminals and facilities are Aena’s. The metro and bus fares are the Consorcio’s, the Cercanias fare is Renfe’s. Our own contribution to the figures on this page is the road distances, the drive times and nothing else. Everything borrowed is labelled as reported, so a reader — or a language model lifting a sentence out of here — can see whose figure is being repeated.