The single most useful thing to establish before a Belfast pickup is which airport you are actually landing at. The city has two, they serve different routes, and they sit a considerable distance apart. Belfast International is at Aldergrove, out to the north-west of the city; the other sits much closer in. Confirming the correct one takes a moment and prevents the sort of mistake that costs an hour to unpick.
Once that is settled, Belfast International is a straightforward airport to be met at. There is one passenger terminal, one arrivals route and a public meeting area within sight of the doors. What makes the arrangement worth having here is not complexity inside the building but the drive outside it, because the city is a proper journey away rather than a short hop.
Two Belfast airports, and which one you want
Belfast International, at Aldergrove in County Antrim, lies roughly eighteen miles north-west of the city and is reached by the A57 and the M2. It handles long-haul services and a good deal of holiday charter traffic alongside its short-haul routes. The other Belfast airport is much closer to the centre and serves a different mix of destinations. A chauffeur sent to the wrong one is a long way from being useful.
We therefore confirm the airport as well as the flight number at the point of booking, and we put it in writing when we come back to you. If you are travelling on a connecting itinerary or a codeshare and are not certain, send us the flight number and we will work it out from that. It is a thirty-second check that removes an entire category of problem.
Inside the terminal at Aldergrove
One passenger terminal, one reclaim hall, one set of arrivals doors. Your chauffeur parks, walks in and stands in the public arrivals area with a board showing your name, positioned so it is visible as you come through. The cases are taken there and you are walked out to the car. It is the same service we provide at every airport and it stops at the same place.
There is no airside element and there cannot be. We are an independent chauffeur company with no affiliation to the airport, its handling agents or any airline operating here, and no arrangement that permits anyone to meet you before you have cleared customs. Anybody describing something different is describing something a chauffeur company is not able to provide.
How long clearance tends to take
The mix of traffic at Belfast International means the arrivals experience varies more than at a purely short-haul airport. A flight in from Great Britain with a light load can clear very quickly indeed. A long-haul arrival or a full charter returning from a holiday destination will take considerably longer, with a larger volume of hold luggage and, for some routes, border checks that a domestic arrival does not face.
As a planning assumption we tend to allow somewhere around twenty to thirty minutes from the published landing time for a short-haul arrival with checked bags, and more for long-haul or a busy charter period. These are working figures for building the collection around, not commitments about how quickly you will get out. Nobody can promise a queue length they cannot see.
The waiting is built into the booking on our side. Your chauffeur will already be in the hall with the board up before you emerge, and a generous allowance is included as standard. If a delay runs long, a WhatsApp message is enough to keep the arrangement in place rather than watching it quietly expire.
Night landings and the drive that follows
Charter and long-haul services bring passengers into this airport at genuinely awkward hours, and the drive to the city afterwards is not a five-minute run. Eighteen miles on the A57 and M2 in the dark, possibly in rain, at the end of a long flight, is exactly the sort of journey where having a car and a named chauffeur already waiting changes the character of the night.
For late arrivals we plan the collection the same way as any other, working from the published schedule and the clearance time we would expect, with the allowance built in. What changes is the onward leg: quieter roads, a faster run, and a rather stronger case for the more comfortable vehicle. If you are heading somewhere rural in Antrim or Down, tell us the full address so nothing is being worked out at midnight.
- Belfast city centre, roughly eighteen miles by the A57 and M2
- Lisburn and the southern approaches, straightforward at most hours
- Antrim and Ballymena, close to the airport and easily reached
- The Causeway Coast, north through the Glens and on to Ballycastle
- The Mourne Mountains and Newcastle, a comfortable drive south
- Ferry terminals at Belfast harbour, when the onward leg is by sea
Meet and greet or kerbside
Most guests here choose to be met inside, and for good reason. The terminal is unfamiliar to many arriving passengers, the hour is often late, and the alternative involves standing outside describing your position to somebody in a car park. Being handed straight from the arrivals doors to the boot of a car is a materially better end to a long flight.
Kerbside remains available and is perfectly reasonable for a light traveller on a familiar route. As at every airport, the important thing is that the choice is made when the booking is made. Deciding after you have landed, in a busy hall, with a phone that has just reconnected to a new network, is the hardest possible moment to organise anything.
What to confirm before you fly
The list below is short and it removes most of what can go wrong. The first item on it is the one that matters most at this particular airport, and it is worth double-checking against your boarding pass rather than your memory of what you booked several months ago.
Anything that changes later can be sent by message and the arrangement reworked. What we would rather avoid is a chauffeur standing in the correct hall at the correct time for a party that has landed elsewhere, which is entirely preventable with one line of confirmation.
- Which Belfast airport your flight actually lands at
- The flight number and scheduled arrival time
- Passenger numbers and any children's ages
- A counted total of cases and cabin bags
- The full onward address, including rural townland details where relevant
- A WhatsApp number that will work once you land
