Ryanair's 40th Birthday & Only Irish Domestic Flight!
On July 8th 2025, Ryanair celebrated its 40th Anniversary. In the four decades its been around they've gone from flying on Embraer E110 turboprop between Waterford to London Gatwick to becoming the largest Boeing 737 operator in Europe! The airline started out as a full-fare regional airline for the first 10 years of its existence before embracing the Low-Cost Carrier model in the early-mid 1990s under the spearhead of Michael O'Leary!
I opted to mark Ryanair's Anniversary with a "Mile-Run" type trip featuring three flights on the airline. I opted to fly London Stansted to Kerry Airport to Dublin Airport to London Stansted. I chose this route as it wasn't going to be too expensive, but it featured two important destinations- Dublin and London Stansted, the airline's two largest bases as well as a flight from Kerry Airport to Dublin Airport, the only Irish domestic route served by the Airline!!!
Here's how the travel experience goes flying from Kerry Airport to Dublin Airport with Ryanair! I hope you enjoy the read!
City of Tralee to Kerry Airport
After enjoying a day in Tralee, one of the nearby major towns/cities to Kerry Airport, I opted to get a train back towards the Airport. The train doesn't go right to the doorstep of Kerry Airport- it stops at Farranfore Station, then its a 10 minute walk over to the Airport. I was doing this in early July, so the weather was lovely that day, but I can understand why people would not be impressed in doing this transit in the winter.
The journey into Farranfore from Tralee is only 20-25 minutes, but it runs very infrequently so you got to ensure you know the schedule in order to plan ahead accordingly, so you might need to get a train that arrives you into Farranfore Station quite a few hours before the flight. Despite this, it was a comfortable ride for €4.50 (£4.05p) and very scenic!
Its a straight walk for about 10-15 minutes from Farranfore Station to Kerry Airport's Terminal, it is quite peaceful and takes you past the end of the Runway. If you're lucky you might catch a plane taking off as you walk to the airport, which happened to me as I spotted a Cessna 150 performing "Touch and Go" manoeuvres, I also spotted a Cessna Citation parked up just off the Terminal as I neared the building.
Kerry Airport Experience
Kerry Airport is not the largest Airport in Europe or Ireland, but it provides important air links from the region without having to go as far as Cork or Shannon. Ryanair & its subsidiaries offers the only scheduled airline services as of November 2025 serving: Dublin Airport, London Stansted, London Luton, Manchester and Frankfurt Hahn year round as well as Seasonal routes to Faro and Alicante.
The check in area is very small at Kerry Airport, its even smaller than Southampton Airport and Bournemouth Airport, which are two of the smallest airports in the UK! As you can see I got a good 75%-80% of the landside departure area in one shot from my GoPro! There are some plaques showcasing the history of Kerry Airport, including a shot of the inaugural Ryanair flight in May 1989 with an ATR-42… Who remembers flying Ryanair on an aircraft that wasn't a Boeing 737!!!
I visited the Airport bar and café which is located to the right of the check in desks. It was due to close for the day just before I had to go airside, my flight was the last scheduled departure that day and I opted to enjoy a quick half-pint of Guinness.
Airside is quite basic, there's toilets with an Irish Pub and enough seats for about 300 people… which covers basically two Boeing 737-800 loads. I arrived as the flight to Faro Airport was loading up, but my flight was coming in from Dublin Airport.
Eventually it was time to start boarding the Dublin flight once the Faro flight was beginning to get underway… There are only three gates for boarding at Kerry Airport, though I can imagine the place would be hell if there was three full Boeing 737-800 parked up at the same time…
Ryanair FR612 (KIR-DUB)
Our Boeing 737-8AS(WL) for today's flight was to be operated by 9H-QBC, this aircraft was originally delivered to Ryanair's main Irish airline brand as EI-GDE in October 2017, it moved to the Maltese arm of Ryanair- Malta Air in February 2020- just before the pandemic hit Europe. It received the Boeing 737 Split-Scimitar winglet upgrades sometime in between late-2024 and March 2025. This aircraft has the full Boeing Sky Interior which is featured on all Boeing 737-800 delivered to Ryanair since early 2016.
I took my place in Seat 12A right by the left engine. Avoid Seat 10A (737-8MAX) & Seat 11A (737-800) on Ryanair as these seats don't have windows, Seats 12A & 9A are pretty safe bets usually if you want a front view of the engine/wing.
We left the stand for an on time departure across the Republic of Ireland, as we taxied down the Runway to the other end where we'd have to make a 180-degree turn for departure, I got a good look at a hangar at the end of Kerry Airport which is a small base for Private Jets and General Aviation.
We did the 180-degree turn at the end of the Runway at Kerry Airport and we darted down the Runway and up into the skies over County Kerry! There was quite a bit of cloud cover as we took off, but it didn't take long to burst through into the clear skies above Ireland for our 55 minute flight!
As we climbed, there was some amazing countryside views on take off!
The flight was about half-full, not a very busy service on this particular day, pretty much every passenger could indulge in a window seat or aisle seat- making the middle seats a bit redundant!
Before the flight departed Kerry Airport, I opted to order to seat through the Ryanair App as Ryanair don't regularly hand out the inflight magazines these days. You got to do these Order to Seat things before take off as Ryanair Boeing 737s don't have inflight Wi-Fi. It was a short flight so I kept it simple to a can of Sprite (lemonade) and a bag of Skittles!
Flying over the Republic of Ireland that July afternoon was quite nice, however there was quite a bit of cloud cover on the weather forecast for Dublin… I quite like the new Boeing 737 "Sky Interiors" on the Ryanair aircraft, the older cabin these days is looking quite dated, but the older seats are slightly more comfortable than the slimline seats on this aircraft!
Eventually the flight passed and we started our arrival into Dublin Airport. We flew out over the Irish Sea on descent before turning in, as you can see in my photo, during our descent we passed "Ireland's Eye", a small island just off Portmanock Beach in County Swords… though not as exotic or as good a plane spotting beach as Sint Maarten's Maho Beach or even the beaches by the Airports in Skiathos and Phuket!
We landed into Dublin Airport on time onto Runway 28. It was very cloudy around Dublin Airport and County Swords, once we left the Runway we made the taxi across the Airport over to Terminal One which hosts the Ryanair operations.
We pulled into the Gate area for Terminal One towards the North by the new Runway at Dublin Airport. I held back to be one of the last passengers off, I wanted to still get a few more pictures and film footage without causing problems for other passengers.
As with all Ryanair flights at Dublin Airport Terminal 1, it was an open disembarkation- something loathed by many travellers, but this one specifically enjoys them at least, regardless of the weather!!!
Unlike most domestic flights where you don't need to go through a passport control, that is not the case for this particular service as you still need to go through passport control at Dublin Airport. Being a UK citizen I had my passport from my London-Kerry flight that day, so I just showed my passport and explained I was changing to a flight from Dublin to London but had to change flights by going landside, I had no issues. If you do this flight, I would highly recommend using a passport- even though you don't necessarily need one for domestic flying.
