Departure
96%
vs 95% ▲ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Dublin Airport, on the northern fringe of the city at Collinstown, is Ireland's principal international gateway and the hub for Aer Lingus and a major base for Ryanair. For the simulator pilot it offers three substantial hard-surfaced runways, full ILS coverage on most approaches and a busy mixed jet and turboprop environment typical of a large European hub.
Dublin Airport (ICAO EIDW) sits at Collinstown, on the northern edge of Dublin, and is Ireland's busiest airport by a wide margin. It serves as the primary hub for Aer Lingus and Aer Lingus Regional (operated by Emerald Airlines) and is a major operating base for Ryanair, with an extensive short and medium-haul network and long-haul services concentrated on North America and the Middle East. For a virtual pilot it is a rewarding destination thanks to its scale, its trio of long hard runways and the dense mix of airline and cargo traffic that populates its approaches and holds.
The airport lies in the townland of Collinstown, about seven kilometres north of Dublin city centre and roughly three kilometres south of Swords. As Ireland's principal international airport it sits within controlled airspace with radar and procedural services provided from the tower and approach positions listed below; pilots planning a visit should expect to operate under full ATC control throughout the Dublin terminal area rather than as an uncontrolled join.
Dublin has three physical runway pairs. The main runway, 10L/28R, is a hard-surfaced, lit strip with ILS, some 9,249 feet long on the 10L threshold and 8,693 feet on the 28R threshold. A second parallel hard runway, 10R/28L, is 8,594 feet long in both directions, lit and equipped with ILS. The cross runway, 16/34, is 6,753 feet long, hard-surfaced and lit, with ILS available on runway 16 but not on runway 34. Field elevation is 213 feet, with the airport centred on 53.4214N, 6.2700W.
Dublin works a full suite of ATC frequencies: Approach on 121.1 MHz, ATIS on 124.525 MHz, Clearance Delivery on 121.875 MHz, Ground on 121.8 MHz, Tower on 118.6 MHz, and a Flight Information Service on 118.5 MHz. Instrument approaches are supported by ILS on runways 10L, 28R, 10R, 28L and 16, reflecting the airport's status as a fully equipped international hub.
The airport has its origins as a wartime aerodrome in the townland of Collinstown, in what is now Fingal. The site was selected in 1917 as a base for the British Royal Flying Corps, and by April 1918, when the Corps became the Royal Air Force, construction was more than a fifth complete. Building work was finished in 1919, just as the Irish War of Independence broke out, and on 20 March 1919 a group of Irish Volunteers, including several RAF employees, raided the base and made off with rifles and ammunition. The site was later used as an internment camp for republican prisoners before being handed to the Irish Free State at the end of 1922, after which the airfield fell into disrepair. Ireland's new civil airline, Aer Lingus, was established in 1936 and initially flew from Baldonnel, but a decision was taken to develop Collinstown as Dublin's civil airport. Work began in 1937, and by the end of 1939 a grass airfield, internal roads, car parks and lighting were in place; the inaugural flight, to Liverpool, departed on 19 January 1940. A new terminal building, designed by Desmond FitzGerald and a team of architects including Kevin Barry and Niall Montgomery, opened in early 1941 and was influenced by the tiered styling of contemporary ocean liners; it won the RIAI Triennial Gold Medal in 1942 and is now a listed building. Wartime restrictions, known in Ireland as the Emergency, limited services until late 1945, with Aer Lingus's Liverpool route (and for a time Manchester's Barton Aerodrome) the only scheduled international service. After the war traffic expanded rapidly: Aer Lingus resumed London services to Croydon in November 1945, KLM opened the first continental European route with a service to Amsterdam in 1947, and three new concrete runways were completed in 1948. By 1950, after a decade of operation, the airport had carried 920,000 passengers, and further runway extensions and terminal enhancements followed through the 1950s as new carriers such as British European Airways, Sabena and BKS began serving Dublin, with Aer Lingus launching a transatlantic service via Shannon in 1958.
Dublin Airport today is a large international hub operated by DAA, handling over 36 million passengers in 2025 and generating more than 226,000 aircraft movements, making it comfortably the busiest airport in Ireland and the twelfth busiest in Europe. It hosts United States border preclearance facilities, one of only two such operations in Europe alongside Shannon. The airport is home to Aer Lingus and Aer Lingus Regional (operated by Emerald Airlines) and is a major operating base for Ryanair, giving it a constant flow of short, medium and long-haul airline traffic that makes it a busy and demanding hub environment for simulator flying.
