On this page (5 sections)
The route in one look
The pairing is London Gatwick (LGW) to Dublin Airport (DUB), and neither end is ambiguous: Dublin has one airport, so there is none of the guesswork that comes with Belfast or Milan. The great-circle distance is 484km, about 300 miles, which puts Dublin closer to Gatwick than Edinburgh is. Ryanair timetables the sector at about 1 hour 25 minutes. That is a gate-to-gate figure covering pushback, taxi and stand time at both ends, so the time actually in the air is a little under it.
A route runs both ways, and this one reads the same in both directions. Flying out, you leave from the South Terminal at Gatwick and land in Terminal 1 at Dublin. Coming back, you check in at Dublin Terminal 1 and land at Gatwick South, where the railway station is built into the terminal. The one thing that genuinely differs by direction is the border, covered below.
The border position is what separates Dublin from every other international route out of Gatwick. Ireland and the United Kingdom share the Common Travel Area, a bilateral arrangement that predates both countries' membership of the European Union and survived the UK's exit from it. British and Irish citizens move between the two without visas, without residency permits and without routine passport checks. That is a genuinely different legal footing from a flight to Spain, and it is the reason the entry advice on the Spanish routes from Gatwick does not transfer to this one.
Who flies it: a one-airline route
Ryanair is the direct operator on Gatwick to Dublin, and it is the only one. That is unusual for a route with this much demand, and it is worth understanding before you book. easyJet, the biggest airline at Gatwick by some distance, flies the airport's domestic core to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast and Jersey but does not sell Dublin from Gatwick. British Airways runs about 40 short-haul destinations from the South Terminal through its Gatwick-based BA Euroflyer subsidiary, and Dublin is not among them.
Aer Lingus is the name most people expect to see, and it used to be right. The airline announced in January 2024 that it was dropping Dublin to Gatwick after a review of the route's performance, flew it until the end of that March, and concentrated its London flying on Heathrow. Anyone working from memory, or from an old bookmark, will find the route gone rather than merely expensive. The full carrier list for the airport, with the terminal against each name, is on airlines at Gatwick, and the live picture of what is actually flying today is on the departures board.
One airline has a consequence worth naming. On a competitive route, a cancellation can often be fixed by rebooking onto a rival the same day. On this one there is no rival at Gatwick, so a cancelled flight usually means waiting for Ryanair's next departure, or crossing London to Heathrow, Luton or Stansted and buying a new ticket. That is not a reason to avoid the route, but it is a reason to leave margin ahead of anything that cannot move, and a reason to read what the airline owes you when a flight goes wrong before you need it.
When to fly: a flat year with sharp days
Dublin has almost no seasonal shape compared with the Mediterranean routes from Gatwick. It carries business traffic, students, weekend city breaks and a large volume of people visiting family, and those four things run all year. There is no summer-only version of this corridor and no winter thinning of the kind you see on the Spanish beach routes. Fares rise around obvious peaks, the Six Nations weekends, St Patrick's Day and the run-up to Christmas, but the flying itself continues at much the same shape month to month.
The pattern that matters is daily rather than seasonal. Short business-heavy corridors bunch at the ends of the working day, so the early morning departures and the evening returns fill first and price highest, while the middle of the day is usually cheaper and quieter. If your trip is flexible, a late-morning outbound and an early-afternoon return will normally cost less and queue less at both ends.
One habit is worth keeping on a single-airline corridor. Check the airline's own timetable for your dates rather than assuming last year's pattern holds, because frequency here is set by one carrier's commercial judgement rather than by competition between several. On a route with three or four airlines, one of them thinning its schedule barely shows; on this one it is the whole picture. That cuts both ways, and Ryanair has added capacity to the corridor as readily as it has taken it away.
At the airport: South Terminal, and the passport rule
Ryanair flies from the South Terminal, which is the easier of Gatwick's two for anyone arriving by rail, because the station is built into the terminal rather than sitting a shuttle ride away. Coming from the North Terminal, allow about ten minutes door to door on the free shuttle. If you are not certain which terminal your flight leaves from, the airline-by-airline terminal lookup settles it, and the South Terminal map shows where check-in, security and the gates sit relative to each other.
Gatwick asks you to arrive at least two hours before departure, and check-in desks for UK and Ireland flights typically open about two hours ahead, a shorter window than the three hours for European flights or four for long-haul. Check in online before you get to the airport: Ryanair charges around £55 per passenger to check in at the desk when free online check-in was available and went unused, which is more than many people pay for the seat. The check-in guide has the deadlines by airline, and the security guide covers what comes out of the bag.
Now the rule that catches people. Because Britain and Ireland share the Common Travel Area, British and Irish citizens are not legally obliged to carry a passport on this route: the Home Office's guidance accepts other evidence of identity and nationality, and there are no routine immigration controls between the two countries. Airlines are not bound by any of that, and Ryanair is stricter. It accepts only a valid passport or a national identity card, and it does not accept a driving licence on any route, a point it makes explicitly for travel between the UK and Ireland because that is where people assume otherwise. The legal position and the boarding position are different things, and it is the boarding position that decides whether you fly. Travel with your passport.
Coming the other way, the UK Electronic Travel Authorisation has applied to non-visa nationals, including EU citizens, since April 2025. There is a large exemption that covers most people on this route: if you live in Ireland and you are travelling from Ireland, you do not need an ETA, and an Irish driving licence is accepted as proof of residence. Under-16s need no proof at all. Anyone else who needs a visa-free short visit should check the scheme before booking. Border Force runs intelligence-led checks rather than routine ones, so carry the document that proves who you are either way. The passport control guide covers the eGate eligibility list on arrival.
Who it suits, honestly
If you live south of the Thames, on the Brighton Main Line, or anywhere the Gatwick Express and Thameslink reach easily, this is the sensible way to Dublin. The flight is short, the fares are usually the lowest of the London airports, and the South Terminal is the least troublesome part of Gatwick to reach without a car. Add a train ticket to the price and it still tends to win.
If you live north or west of London, it probably is not. Heathrow has both Aer Lingus and British Airways on Dublin, at higher frequency and with the real advantage that a cancellation has somewhere to go. Luton and Stansted both carry Ryanair to Dublin and are easier to reach from the north. Crossing London to reach Gatwick for a 1 hour 25 minute flight is a poor trade when a closer airport sells the same route.
The case for booking something else entirely is thinner than it looks. The sea route by ferry and rail exists, and takes the better part of a day. For a weekend it is not competitive. What genuinely deserves a second thought is the single-carrier risk: if your trip has a hard deadline at the far end, a wedding, a connection, a first day at work, the absence of a second airline at Gatwick is the real cost of the cheaper fare, and Heathrow's redundancy may be worth paying for. For everything else, book the Ryanair flight, check in online, and bring the passport you do not legally need.