Want to see the Tar Heels in Dublin? Aer Lingus will make it a weekend trip
By the time an Aer Lingus charter flight carries the UNC Tar Heels football team to Ireland next summer, the sight of the airline’s shamrock-bedecked planes will be common at Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
The Tar Heels open their 2026 season against TCU in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic. By then, the airline will have established five-day-a-week nonstop service between RDU and Dublin, home of Aviva Stadium, where the game will be played on Aug. 29, 2026.
Aer Lingus announced the new nonstop flights Wednesday.
Aer Lingus becomes the record 20th airline doing business at RDU, and Dublin becomes the 82nd place that Triangle residents can fly nonstop.
The Dublin flights will start April 13 and take place Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. Flights will leave RDU at 8:25 p.m. and arrive in Ireland at 8:45 a.m. the following day.
The flights will be year-round, though Aer Lingus may reduce the frequency in the winter, said Bill Byrne, the airline’s senior vice president for North America.
“A year-round direct connection between North Carolina and Ireland couldn’t make more sense,” Byrne said at RDU on Wednesday. “Ireland and North Carolina share deep economic roots, financial and educational as well, and have a shared heritage that goes way back to the Scot-Irish migration.”
Aer Lingus thinks the RDU flight will appeal to both business and leisure travelers on both sides of the Atlantic. More than 1,000 people fly from RDU to Europe each day, said airport president and CEO Michael Landguth, and until now Dublin was the most popular European destination without a nonstop flight.
The number of people flying from RDU to Dublin increased 19% between 2023 and 2024, Landguth said.
“Even though most of those travelers had to go through a hub like Boston or New York,” he said. “Who wants to go through Boston or New York?”
‘Not your parents’ Aer Lingus’
Aer Lingus will use the Airbus A321XLR, a narrow-body plane that will seat 184 people. The plane’s size and range make it key to the airline’s strategy to expand in North America and serve non-hub airports such as RDU, Byrne said. Aer Lingus has doubled in size over the last five years, he said, and will fly nonstop to 21 cities in North America next year.
“This is not your parents’ Aer Lingus, for the Irish community,” he said. “We’re a different airline. It’s about time that we came here.”
Passengers will clear customs in Dublin before they board the plane, so arrivals will go straight from the gate to baggage claim or the curb.
RDU has aggressively recruited new airlines, touting the Triangle’s growing, affluent population and offering financial incentives in some cases. While American and Delta still dominate the market, RDU officials say having more airlines gives travelers more choices and creates competition that can help keep fares down.
With Aer Lingus, RDU will waive certain fees and help market the new flights, Landguth said. The airport also hopes to put together a $1.8 million incentive package for the carrier. The business community has pledged $300,000, and RDU has asked the General Assembly for $1.5 million.
An airline takes a big risk when it starts trans-Atlantic service from an airport like RDU, Landguth said. Between the plane, crews and other costs, Aer Lingus will invest about $100 million in the RDU-Dublin fight, so the incentives help, he said.
“What it does is it sends a very strong message to the airline that the community is invested in this,” he said. “They’ve put their own money and resources behind it to make it successful.”
Travelers can now fly nonstop to a record 15 international destinations from RDU, including four in Canada and two in Mexico. Dublin becomes the fifth European destination, after Frankfurt, London, Paris and Reykjavik.
This story was originally published September 17, 2025 at 3:22 PM with the headline "Want to see the Tar Heels in Dublin? Aer Lingus will make it a weekend trip."
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that Aer Lingus has a flight between Dublin and Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport.
