Ireland's gateway
Dublin is not only the capital city of the Republic of Ireland but also a vibrant and engaging place in its own right. It also has a rather busy international airport which has faithfully served for decades.
Home to Aer Lingus and Ryanair, like everywhere else it has had its highs and lows but in 2019 is growing fast.
Dublin (DUB) has always had a good spread of services across Europe and particularly the UK, but it has also been an important stepping stone to the USA. Unsurprising perhaps given that the links between the two countries are quite strong, and today they are stronger still.
Ireland is the only European country (and one of just six globally – the other five are Aruba; Freeport and Nassau in The Bahamas; Bermuda; Abu Dhabi, UAE and in Canada at Calgary, Toronto, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver and Winnipeg) that has United States pre-clearance facilities at its airports, the other being Shannon. Pre-inspection, a forerunner to preclearance, in Ireland commenced in 1986 and was updated in 2008 to a Preclearance Agreement. Dublin is thus the only capital city in Europe with US Preclearance facilities which means that passengers save time on arrival in the US by completing all the necessary immigration and customs checks prior to even stepping on board their aircraft before the journey across the Atlantic. The only queue a pre-cleared passenger encounters on arrival in the US is the taxi queue to their final destination.
This has proved its worth with regard the UK market and more than 10 million passengers travel between Dublin and Britain annually, accounting for one third of DUB’s overall passenger traffic. Every week there are over 1,200 flights between Dublin Airport and no less than 26 UK airports. The connectivity to these airports boosts DUB’s growing position as a key gateway between Europe and North America as British-based passengers are increasingly using the airport as a hub. Dublin also welcomes large numbers of continental European passengers who use it as a gateway to North America. DUB currently has nine airlines flying 464 flights per week to and from 18 destinations in the US and six destinations in Canada, which equates to an average of 66 flights daily to and from North America.
The US pre-clearance facilities provides a big advantage in developing more routes to the US, growing connecting traffic and is hugely important to DUB. In many cases it underpins the viability of a route which may not have succeeded if it wasn’t for the connecting traffic and it also builds resilience into passenger operations especially in the case of any downturn where the airport is not as reliant on its own home market.
One of the less well-known aspects to travel between the UK and the Republic of Ireland is that Ireland is part of the Common Travel Area (CTA) between the two countries. The CTA also includes the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man - which are not part of the UK – and what this means is that no passport is required for a journey between them. Applied to the Channel Islands, this is something that has been well-known across the UK for decades as the regularity of holidaymakers going to Jersey and Guernsey has shown for years but, at least within the UK, is not quite as well appreciated as it might be when it comes to Ireland.
The CTA has been in existence since the 1920s and travel between the UK and Ireland has always thus been passport-free. Despite this however, as is now standard for air passengers, some form of photographic identification is required for flying anywhere. Even an entirely domestic flight within the UK will need a passenger to carry some kind of ID and it can vary between airlines. Ryanair for example usually insist on a passport even for UK domestic flights, British Airways can be a little more flexible and Aer Lingus will accept a bus pass. The two most common forms of photo identification however, are still passports and, for UK citizens, driving licences. Other forms of acceptable ID are work-related photo-ID cards, citizen cards and similar.
Even though the concept of not needing a passport is valid between the UK and Ireland, it pays to check with the airline you are travelling with and a conversation with officers of the Irish Immigration Service at DUB reveals that, although they will let a British passenger pass through, they also prefer people to have some form of proof with them that they are in fact, British citizens and are thus entitled to travel between the two countries without a passport. Ireland, like the UK, is not a member of the Schengen Agreement so passengers flying in from other EU countries still need a passport.
You can read the full article here:
https://www.kjmtoday.com/single-post/2019/09/08/Ireland%E2%80%99s-Gateway