Aer Lingus

Last year, I booked a round trip ORD to Duesseldorf on Aer Lingus. The Aer Lingus site would not allow me the routing I wanted (over night in Dublin on the return), But Orbitz did, so I went with Orbitz. I could not preselect seats on the Aer Lingus site, they said see Orbitz and Orbitz said see Aer Lingus. Other than that, it all worked out.
An hour and a quarter layover in Dublin sounds pretty tight, but should be doable.

Ive booked Aer Lingus several times thru Expedia. Always worked. Liked the airline and the terminal at Dublin is nice.

I've booked with both Orbitz and Expedia for the same reason and it's always worked out fine. Sometimes you have to go to the operating carrier's website to book seats (after purchasing your tickets on Orbitz/Expedia). You will always have confirmation codes for each airline involved. I've had limited, but good experiences with Aer Lingus.

Important Note: Aer Lingus has built a US IMMIGRATION CENTER actually IN DUBLIN so that it can expand its flights to the US and folks traveling to either Ireland, or carrying on to Europe, can now travel in/out of smaller airports in the US that don't have their own passport control centers. JOY! My hometown airport, Hartford/Springfield in Connecticut is starting round trip flights to Dublin in September and is offering great deals for about 6 months of a travel window. I am sure they are adding flights around the US in a similar fashion, so best to book on their site when possible for the latest changes. You can then get to Europe via a low cost carrier like EasyJet. We are flying in/out of Dublin then heading to Barcelona, driving through France, and flying for a few days to the UK, before returning to Dublin, and then back home - all for the price of what it normally costs for a R/T just between Boston and London. BUT - Caution: If you are routing via Dublin, however, your U.S. passport control check will be After, and In Addition To, a normal local airport security clearance . So assume at least 60-90 minutes to clear local security, plus another 60-90 minutes at least to clear the US Passport /Immigration line. Sometimes the lines are faster/slower, but you have to keep in mind the significant extra time connecting via Dublin if you are heading back to the US. Luckily, Dublin is a clean and pleasant airport with good restaurants and shopping, so any excess time you have to spend after your clearances should be relaxing. The Aer Lingus website itself might accommodate for this extra layover time in a way that other booking engines won't and don't get yourself caught in too tight a layover!

The last post raises questions for me. On the layover in Dublin on the way to Rome, what will we have to do? I assumed it was just find our new gate and wait to board . . . no passport check, no immigration line, no going through security again. Is that true? Because if we have to do any of those other things, I'd be worried about the 1.25 hour layover time. On the return flight, the layover in Dublin is 2 hrs. 5 minutes. Same question . . . what will we need to do on that layover other than find our new gate for our flight to the US? Won't we have gone though all the necessary security, passport check, customs declarations, etc. prior to boarding in Rome? When booking RT ORD-FCO, isn't everything taken care of in the starting and ending airports, with nothing that has to be done at the layover airport? I just can't remember how this has worked on prior flights with layovers.

Changing to another plane in Dublin towards somewhere else in Europe means using the transfer corridor which will include a passport & security check.

Changing to another plane in Dublin heading towards the USA will in general involve the transfer corridor then USA preclearance.

Is 1.25 hours enough time to go through that passport and security check for the flight to Rome? And is 2 hours enough time on the other end of the trip? I have to assume that these flights wouldn't be offered by Aer Lingus if it wasn't possible to make the connection.

You will go through US Customs and immigration in Dublin on the way home. When you land in Chicago, you just exit the plane into the boarding area, then go downstairs and get luggage off the carousel and you are done. It is just like traveling back from Canada where you clear US Customs and Immigration in the Canadian airport.

Edit- I'm trying to remember how this went. Like I said, on the return we spent the night in Dublin. When checking in at Duesseldorf, we were able to check one suitcase all the way through to Chicago. We picked the other one up in Dublin when we arrived. This was because it contained items for which we were claiming EU value added tax refunds, so we needed them in our possession when leaving our last departure airport from the EU. We did not see the other suitcase until we arrived in Chicago. So this leads me to think that we must have retrieved both bags in Chicago, then handed in our stamped declaration card in Chicago and exited the green door. That is because we landed at the International Terminal in Chicago where the Aer Lingus flights go from. We just skipped the Immigration line, since we did that in Dublin.

So I don't think you have to retrieve your bags in Dublin, just go through US Immigration, which is not that long a wait. 2 hours should be OK.

Hope you have time for a Guinness
I booked Aer Lingus for our return flight for an upcoming trip after I heard about the immigration clearance there which will save us time when we land in Boston. Layover is 2.5 hours though, half that could be tough to go through, I am not sure.

We went on the RS tour in fall 2014 booking ORD to Athens through Paris. There was a pilot strike and because we had booked with Orbitz we found out about it a week ahead of time and we're able to easily rebook, others on our tour who had booked direct with the airline didn't know until the night before and list a whole pre day. My point, booking with a booking site versus the airline should be fine. Have a great trip!

We flew Aer Lingus last June -- Chicago to Dublin to London/Paris to Dublin to Chicago. Looks like we had about an hour and 45 minutes outbound to change planes in Dublin. I remember being surprised by the extra step with passport control and security (it was our first trip to Europe). I felt rushed, but we actually had plenty of time and ended up waiting at the gate for an hour or so. On the return trip, we had a bit less than two hours in Dublin and had no problems at all. I'm guessing it took 30 minutes or less to clear security and U.S. customs in the terminal. And as previous posters have noted, once we landed in Chicago, we headed straight for our car. It's really a pretty nice system.

We found the Aer Lingus flights to be perfectly fine and I'd fly them again if it was a good price. On the way back, the on-screen entertainment options were more limited, for some reason, and the food seemed a little worse. But we'd just spent a week in Paris, so perhaps our gastronomic standards had been elevated. ;-)

Checked my passport stamps and we did not have a passport check in Dublin on the way to Germany, since it was an intermediate stop. We got Schengen entry stamp when we landed in Germany. Just follow the directions in Dublin airport and they have people to direct you to the gates for Schengen destinations where there is a split for those entering Ireland.

Hope you have time for a Guinness

Good luck. Based on my experiences, they don't actually have Guinness at the Dublin airport, just Guinness taps that are covered to show that they're out. It happened both times. Maybe I'll get lucky next time.

We used Aer Lingus in April on a Boston-Rome trip (connecting to the RS Sicily tour). I always buy tickets directly through the airline. It was nice going through customs/immigration in Dublin instead of Boston. We had a two hour layover in Dublin, and there was a long wait for immigration. They did not seem to have enough staff to handle the crowd. Even though we almost ran out of time before the flight left for Boston, I still think that they would have held the flight for us.

We are also looking forward the start of the direct flights from Hartford BDL to Dublin.

I know this is an older thread but I just wanted to add to OP's point of booking through Orbitz. I NEVER book through a 3rd party website, with that being said our upcoming trip is LAX>DUB>CDG>FCO>LAX all in about 20 days, Looking on Orbitz I saw that I could book all Legs with Aer Lingus, and I like to have just one airline I am dealing with plus they were the cheapest without doing a lower budget airline. On the Aer Lingus website they have a multi ticket option but only two line items. I though I would book our two internationals with them at the price point I wanted, then book the inter-europe flight separately. I was fooling around on Orbitz last night and plugged in all three legs of our trip and it was cheaper than just booking the two flights by about $80.00...how weird is that?? So I booked with Orbitz, got my confirmation with a reference number for Aer Lingus, went on the Aer Lingus website and there my trip was! Orbitz had pre-selected our seats, so I just called Aer Lingus this morning to change them, no problem. I still have some anxiety about booking with Orbitz for such a big trip but so far so good.