Belfast International Airport and car park

Berberis

Hi Folks, flying off from Belfast international Airport end of May for family holiday. Flight leaves at 6:00am.
We plan to leave around midnight and drive up to have plenty of time to park car in their long term car park. I do not finish work until 7:00pm the evening before so it does not make sense to book into hotel the night before as even if we left at 8pm it would be close to 11 or midnight before we would get to check in and then have to be in airport 4 hours later to check in there.
Has anyone any experience of using Belfast’s car park and airport at this hour of morning and if so any advice you could give us.
IO know its months away, but I like to plan well in advance

mfceiling

Belfast international airport is small and not busy. The roads around it are quiet so early morning should be a breeze. I'm not sure there is much to keep you going for 3 or 4 hours in it tbh.

If I was you I'd hit the bed at home for a few hours first and then drive up. You'll do it comfortably in 2 hours from Dublin early in the morning.

hawkwind23

dont use the main car park unless you get it cheap booking in advance.
try KARL or google for a few cheaper alternatives.
all of them including the long stay involve a short bus ride to the main terminal.
id give yourself around 3 hours from Dublin , its easy to find and well signposted , around half an hour from Belfast but always seems to take longer when you are unsure of the way

jjbrien

Park at the http://www.mccausland.co.uk its right beside the airport 500 meters or so from the door. Pretty cheap too

owenc

mfceiling wrote: »

Belfast international airport is small and not busy. The roads around it are quiet so early morning should be a breeze. I'm not sure there is much to keep you going for 3 or 4 hours in it tbh.

If I was you I'd hit the bed at home for a few hours first and then drive up. You'll do it comfortably in 2 hours from Dublin early in the morning.

Well its hardly small with 4 million passengers.

AFK123

i flew out of belfast a couple of years ago with wife and kids. From navan it took about 3 hours to be comfortable at the aitport. what i would say is that we were booked in for a 7am flight and walked into airport at 5 and ended up having to run to the plane. it took ages to get checked in with Jet2. having said that, they were great to deal with.

We then got to security and took about 45 minutes to get through Our bag beeped so they wanted to check it but they left it on the ground with 3/4 other peples bags in the same situation before someone appeared after 10 minutes to go through bag manually.

Nice airport but gve plenty of time in my experience

Berberis

Thanks for the advice folks. all 3 car parks coming in at the £52 - £56. McCausland been the highest and Karl and the airports been £52. I am going to leave booking it on-line untill a week or so befoer we depart, just in case we have to change for whatever reason.
We are travelling from West Wicklow so I am sure it will take at least 3 and half hours, and would like to be in airport at least 2 hours before flight departure.
I read on a few websites that security can be very slow in this airport, AFK123 you have me alarmed a tad now. Might try and get to airport for 3:30.
Flying with Thomson holidays and as far as I know we should be able to check in on-line so hopefully it will just be a bag drop at departures, but sometimes that can be just as long as a full check in

Tangey99

Mccauslands' is the most convenient, and I'm including the airport's own car park in that. The airport's own long term park is a good 15mins+ walk to the airport building entrance, and all of that is uncovered. Apparently they do run a shuttle bus, but you'll have to drag you suitcases to the bus stop point, and according to the parking info its on request. (I haven't used this service personally, last time I park their some years ago, either I was unaware of the bus, or they didn't have one.

McCausland's run their own set of shuttle buses to the airport, leaving you in a designated drop-off area, about 90 secs of open walking to the airport building entrance.

I have flown twice on the first BA easyjet flight out of the airport to Gatwick. This is in fact the 2nd scheduled flight of the day, 6:25am. At that time, it was 10 mins tops to get through security, basically no waiting time.

Might be slightly different if there is a couple of charter flights out, but can't think it would be majorly different.