Aer Lingus expands to Nashville, will add nonstop flights to Dublin
The Music City and the Emerald Isle are suddenly a lot closer.
Aer Lingus will launch a new route from Dublin Airport (DUB) to Nashville International Airport (BNA), the airline and BNA announced on Friday. Service begins April 12, 2025, with four weekly flights in each direction.
Flight EI76 will depart from Nashville at 6:40 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, arriving in Dublin the next morning at 8:50 a.m. The westbound flight, EI77, will leave Dublin at 2:05 p.m. and arrive in Nashville at 5:10, also on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. All times for the routes are local.
The Irish flag carrier plans to fly its newest aircraft, the Airbus A321XLR, on the route. The A321XLR is the longest-range version of the A320neo family and was only just certified by the European aviation regulator this summer. Airbus is aiming to make the first customer deliveries of the new jet in the second half of October.
Although Aer Lingus was originally meant to be the launch customer for the jet, the first deliveries were shifted to sister airline Iberia by the International Airlines Group, the airlines' parent group. Iberia plans to debut the jet between Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport (MAD) and Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) as soon as Nov. 14, although, at the time of that announcement, the aircraft's delivery had been scheduled several weeks earlier before being delayed to mid- or late October.
Aer Lingus has not published its seat map for the A321XLR yet, although it will likely be similar to the slightly shorter-range A321LR that the airline currently flies. Those jets feature 16 lie-flat business-class seats in a staggered 2-2 and 1-1 configuration, along with 168 seats in economy laid out in the standard 3-3 configuration. The new flights are on sale on Aer Lingus' website, though they are shown as being operated by the generic A321neo that has an identical seat map as the A321LR.
The flight — which is pegged at 3,905 miles, according to Great Circle Mapper — will clock in at about eight hours and 10 minutes en route to Dublin and nine hours and five minutes on the westbound to Nashville.
Introductory fares for travel anytime between April 12 and May 31, 2025, are available on the new route for as low as $499 round-trip. You have to book your flight before 7 p.m. EDT on Oct. 31, 2024, in order to get the promotional fares, so act fast if you're interested in taking a trip from the country music capital to Dublin or beyond.
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