Singapore Airlines returns to Madrid after 22 years with a 16-hour A350 route
Madrid becomes the carrier's 15th European destination and its second in Spain, and the new service ends its Milan routing to Barcelona.
Singapore Airlines is returning to Madrid today, October 26, more than two decades after it last served the Spanish capital. Flight SQ388 departed Singapore Changi at 11:30 PM local time and is scheduled to land at Madrid Barajas at 8:50 AM on Tuesday.
The outbound journey takes 16 hours and 20 minutes, includes a one-hour stop at Barcelona El Prat, and keeps passengers on one aircraft. The Star Alliance carrier will operate the route five times a week on its long-haul Airbus A350-900 fleet, configured with 253 seats across three cabins.
The cabin breaks down into 42 Business Class seats, 24 Premium Economy seats and 187 in Economy. Singapore Airlines last flew to Madrid in October 2004, when Boeing 747-400s reached the city after stopping at Paris Charles de Gaulle. The new service extends its existing Barcelona flights.
Flight SQ388 is blocked at 14 hours and 10 minutes to reach Barcelona, followed by one hour on the ground and a further 70 minutes of flying to Madrid. The late-night departure from Changi puts passengers into Spain by morning. Madrid becomes the airline's 15th European destination and its second in Spain.
The return leg runs an hour shorter
The return service, SQ387, turns around in just over an hour and leaves Madrid at 10:00 AM. It spends 80 minutes on the ground in Barcelona before beginning its 12-hour, 50-minute hop to Changi. The full Madrid to Singapore journey takes 15 hours and 25 minutes, nearly an hour less than the outbound.
Outbound flights run on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, while the Madrid legs operate on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Singapore Airlines will not sell tickets solely for the leg between Barcelona and Madrid, which departs at 7:40 AM and lands at 8:50 AM.
The five weekly flights replace the two weekly nonstops to Barcelona, and the three-times-weekly Singapore to Milan Malpensa to Barcelona service that ends on October 27. Until now, Madrid-bound passengers relied on codeshares with Star Alliance partners Lufthansa and Swiss, often via Munich at close to 18 hours.
The airline joins several Asian carriers already flying to Madrid, including Air China, Beijing Capital Airlines, Cathay Pacific, China Eastern, China Southern, Hainan Airlines, Korean Air, Sichuan Airlines and Uzbekistan Airways. Singapore Airlines first reached the Spanish capital in April 1992 with Boeing 747-300s that routed via Paris or Amsterdam.
Those early services were later upgraded to the 747-400, with every flight connecting through Paris. The Madrid presence lasted 12 years. The return arrival time of 8:25 AM the next day in Singapore, after a 12:35 PM departure from Barcelona, completes the rotation.
Barcelona has been served for more than two decades, beginning in July 2006 with three weekly flights that stopped in Milan Malpensa. Nonstop services began in March 2011, when the city became a stop on the airline's first South American route, to Sao Paulo Guarulhos. That route ended in 2016.
The airline resumed nonstop Singapore to Barcelona flights in June 2024. The new Madrid extension builds directly on that restored service, and Barcelona arrivals from Singapore land at 6:40 AM, leaving a morning onward hop of 70 minutes for those continuing to the capital.
What the A350 and the network say
The Airbus A350 is synonymous with luxury, high standards and environmental stewardship at Singapore Airlines. The type is also going to Sydney: we reported that the airline brings daily A350s to Sydney's new airport on 23 November, a separate expansion from the Madrid launch.
Madrid will be served five times a week, not daily, and the timetable is built around the Barcelona stop rather than a direct overnight arrival. The one-hour ground stop outbound and 80-minute stop on the return are the only pauses in each rotation.
What the airline has not said is how the route performs against the connecting options passengers already use.
Delta is also closing in on its own nonstop Singapore route, its first since 2019, which we covered separately. For travellers heading to Spain, the morning arrival in Madrid at 8:50 AM allows a same-day start, with no European hub change in between.
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