Belfast to get new Dublin Airport service in bus company expansion

Belfast will get a new Dublin Airport bus service from this month in a €10 million public transport company expansion.

Dublin Express will launch a new service connecting Belfast with Dublin on July 18th.

The company, which already serves Dublin Airport from the city centre, plans to spend about €10 million on eight coaches to run the service in what is a key expansion for the business here.

Its new route will link Glengall Street in Belfast to Dublin city centre and the airport, with 16 trips in either direction every day.

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Dublin Express will hire 40 workers, including drivers, management and maintenance workers, mainly in Belfast and Dungannon, Co Tyrone, to staff the service.

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The move comes as demand grows for public service links to Ireland’s biggest airport, which serves large numbers of travellers from Northern Ireland.

The company, part of UK group National Express, calculates that about one million people from Northern Ireland use the airport every year as travellers from the region can reach it easily by road.

Rory Fitzgerald, Dublin Express general manager, dubbed the new service a “significant milestone” connecting Ireland’s two most populated cities.

Dublin Express already runs services from the airport to the city centre, serving key destinations such as Heuston station and the tourist district of Temple Bar.

Speaking after the announcement on Monday, Mr Fitzgerald confirmed that staff working at the airport found that Belfast was the route most sought by travellers not on their way to Dublin.

He noted that the squeeze on car parking space at the airport added to the attraction of using public transport to get to the airport in the first place.

“It’s also the greener option,” Mr Fitzgerald added.

The bus company will begin selling tickets this week, offering the first 10,000 buyers a €1/£1 once-off special to promote the new service.

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According to Mr Fitzgerald, customers are responding well to its pilot sale of Cork’s Kent railway station to Dublin Airport tickets, which it has been running jointly with Iarnród Éireann.

This allows people to travel by train from Cork and bus to Dublin Airport on a single ticket. Mr Fitzgerald said both companies hoped to expand the scheme, depending on the initial response to the trial.

Dublin Express is keen to cash in on other opportunities in Ireland, but Mr Fitzgerald said it operates in a highly regulated industry, so this process takes time. “We would like to develop the market more,” he said.

The company launched in March 2020, but Covid restrictions meant that it started trading as restrictions lifted in summer 2021.

National Express is the UK’s biggest coach operator with more than 540 destinations across that country. It earned £528 million (€615 million) in revenue last year.

The UK company is part of London-listed Mobico, which owns Alsa in Spain, along with businesses in Germany, where it operates rail services, North America and Bahrain. It had sales of £2.8 billion in 2022.