We are booked on the 14 day Ireland tour in July 2018 and the tour begins in Dublin and ends in Belfast. I'm finding many return flight schedules go from Belfast to London Heathrow. While some flights have a 4 hour layover in London, many of them have only 1.5 hours or so. My questions are: is there a terminal change for the flight from London back to either the US or Canada; if a terminal change do we have to go through security? If either of these conditions are true, it's hard to imagine that less than 2 hours would be enough. For anyone who has flown from Seattle to Ireland and back, do you have a preferred route schedule? Thank you.
Posted by
1172 posts
After the tour is over, I would take the train from Belfast to Dublin and fly back out of Dublin. It is only about 2 hours on the train and you will have so many more flight options ( direct and most likely cheaper) from Dublin
Posted by
bedford, indiana
459 posts
A couple of things that I hope will be helpful. First, on Heathrow's website they have a program that helps give you an idea of how long they estimate your connection will take, so go to the Heathrow website and click around till you find it and see if it is helpful. You probably should view the same flight earlier in the year or talk to the airline to determine for sure if there is a terminal change. We connected thru Heathrow for Ireland and also for Scotland. Both times we had to go through security and passport control. Be aware that because you are connecting out of Ireland prior to your return to the US you will not go through the pre-customs check in Ireland, that is only for direct flights to the USA. I would think anything less than 1.5 hrs would be too short of time and it would make me uncomfortable. That being said, and as crazy as Heathrow connections are, they always managed to get us to our flights, the closet connection we had was 2 hours and we had to hustle because of flight delay into Heathrow. We were on BA and they gave us a priority pass when they saw we were close on our connection and they hustled us through with help from a BA employee! It is also important/helpful that you are traveling on the same airline all the way from Ireland to the US and not on two separate tickets you may have booked. One ticket will put much of the pressure on the airline for your trip and take it off of you, if you booked separate flights the responsibility for catching flights is on you. So for me, 1.5 hours would make me very very nervous unless you have some real experience at Heathrow
Posted by
Lynnwood, Washington
8880 posts
Seattle non stop London and then connect to Dublin. I am with the poster that said just take the 2 hour train ride back to Dublin and fly out of there. We purchased Seattle-Dublin RT for August 2018 for around $880 on BA.
Aer Lingus is starting a new service from Seattle this spring that you may want to explore. These are also connecting flights with the connections made in the US.
My personal preference is to make connections in Europe rather than in US and do the Seattle to Europe portion as a non stop.
Posted by
Waterville, Ireland
409 posts
I just flew through Heathrow on Monday. Kerry Airport to Dublin to Heathrow to Washington, DC. I do this flight often. Sometimes it's "hang out at a cafe and eat, drink a glass of wine, and peruse the fancy shops." Sometimes its "rush rush rush to get to the connection!" You just never know.
Just remember, if you check a bag all the way through, they will NOT take off without you on that plane. So those "missed connections" are pretty rare, these days. What with security, and all..... :-(
Susan
Expat living in Waterville
Posted by
Oxford, United Kingdom
5456 posts
Note that if you don't need to terminals at Heathrow connecting from Belfast then you won't need to go through security again. So for example if your onward flight is with BA from T5 make sure the flight in is with BA rather than EI. If your onward flight is from T3 or T4 you are going to be out of luck on this.
From Dublin you will always go through security if connecting in Heathrow as the UK doesn't take on trust any other country's security.
Posted by
New York, NY, USA
11294 posts
Here is the Heathrow Connection Tool. Put in your EXACT details, and it will tell you all the steps and the estimated time it will take (key word, of course, is estimated): https://www.heathrow.com/flight-connections
Whether or not there is a terminal change depends on the exact flights you are taking. Beware of code shares. For instance, a flight with a British Airways number may be on British Air (uses Heathrow Terminal 5), Aer Lingus (uses Terminal 2) or American Airlines (uses Terminal 3).
Posted by
OP
5 posts
Thank you everyone for the great advice and helpful tools. This will make our decisions easier!
Posted by
Seattle WA area
8 posts
Last summer we flew BA Seattle to Dublin round trip through Heathrow. Even though the flights were in the same terminal. 90 minutes would be a minimum, assuming flights are on time or early. That terminal is huge.
Friends flew Vancouver BC to Dublin nonstop on Air Canada. They had family in Bellingham who shuttled them to Vancouver airport.
I'd seriously look at Aer Lingus nonstop Seattle - Dublin flight. I think you also clear US Customs in Dublin.