The sector is held by Jet2, Ryanair and TUI Airways.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
EMA Derby and Nottingham to ALC Alicante
East Midlands Airport, the United Kingdom, to Alicante-Elche Airport, Spain. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 4.4 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,619 km
- Block, estimated
- 2h 34m
- Door to door
- 9h 19m
What EMA to ALC looks like
The EMA to ALC sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Derby and Nottingham EMA to Alicante ALC is a medium haul sector of 1,619 km by great circle, flown nonstop 4.4 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,619 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 2h 34m.
Derby and Nottingham EMA is a large airport in the network held here, 91 scheduled destinations and 74.6 departures a day. Alicante ALC has 145 destinations and 231.5 departures a day.
Alicante carries about 3.1 times the departures of Derby and Nottingham, so a courier who has to be rebooked has far more to work with at one end of this pair than at the other.
Alicante is one hour ahead of Derby and Nottingham all year.
The pair sits inside Europe, a corridor where the site already publishes 14 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on EMA to ALC from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| EMA to ALC | 4.43 | 31 | Jet2, Ryanair, TUI Airways |
| ALC to EMA | 4.43 | 31 | Jet2, Ryanair, TUI Airways |
3 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
At 4.4 times a day there is usually another departure within a few hours, which is what makes a same day booking on this pair realistic.
Between them the two directions put about 62 departures a week on EMA to ALC, which is the number that decides whether a seat can be found today or on Thursday.
The clock from collection to signature
The same ground timings the route calculator starts from, applied to the 2h 34m block time on EMA to ALC. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to EMA | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At EMA before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| EMA to ALC in the air, estimated | 154 min | 7h 04m |
| Formalities at ALC | 90 min | 8h 34m |
| Delivery run in Alicante | 45 min | 9h 19m |
| Door to door | 559 min | 9h 19m |
On the desk standard ground timings, ninety minutes to collect and reach the airport, three hours at the airport before departure, ninety minutes of arrival formalities and a forty five minute delivery run, the door to door figure for EMA to ALC is 9h 19m.
A courier who leaves Derby and Nottingham at 09:00 local is on the ground in Alicante at about 12:34 local and at the door by 14:49 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Alicante, the last useful departure from Derby and Nottingham is around 12:11 local.
When the nonstop does not work
Every airport that joins the two ends, ranked by when they land, among the ones whose weaker leg is dependable enough to plan on. Connection time is allowed for the size of the hub. 30 of them join EMA to ALC.
| Connecting at | EMA to hub, flights a day | Hub to ALC, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ibiza IBZ | 1.43 | 4.29 | 1,746 | 4h 16m |
| Palma PMI | 5.57 | 4.43 | 1,827 | 4h 39m |
| Barcelona BCN | 1.29 | 4.57 | 1,712 | 4h 46m |
| Manchester MAN | 1 | 10.14 | 1,767 | 4h 47m |
| Belfast BFS | 2.86 | 3.57 | 2,250 | 4h 57m |
| Dublin DUB | 2.57 | 3.86 | 2,075 | 4h 58m |
With 4.4 times a day on the nonstop, a connection here is a disruption plan rather than a routing, and it is listed because a closed runway or a cancellation wave is exactly when nobody has time to work it out.
30 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Ibiza IBZ, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about once a day.
Through IBZ the routing covers 1,746 km against the 1,619 km nonstop track and takes about 4h 16m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 60 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 1h 42m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Palma PMI at 4h 39m and Barcelona BCN at 4h 46m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Derby and Nottingham, Birmingham BHX is 51 km away by great circle and carries 139 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
If nothing suitable leaves Alicante, Valencia VLC is 134 km away by great circle and carries 101 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Industry within reach of the two ends
Public manufacturing and research sites whose logistics run through EMA or ALC. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.
- Rolls-Royce, DerbyCivil large engine assembly and test. An engine on wing that is grounded is an aircraft grounded. Logistics through Derby and Nottingham EMA.
Plan Derby and Nottingham to Alicante yourself
The same tool the dispatchers use, open to anybody and free. It is loaded with this pair already. Change either end, add a stopover or a preferred airline, and it works out the connection, the transit and the door to door clock, with the real departures underneath. Put it on your own site if it is useful to you.
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Restrictions
Where this came from, and where to look next
- Carriers and frequencies: AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics, retrieved 2026-09-07. Average daily flights, not a timetable.
- Distances: great circle from published coordinates. They read short against a flown track, which is why the block time above applies a factor to them.
- Block and connection times: the same model the route calculator lower down this page runs, at the same rounding.
- Restrictions: the airport notes file, checked 2026-09-07.
- Industrial sites: public company information. Nothing here says or implies that any company named is a customer of any courier operator.
Who publishes this. OnBoard Courier is a placement desk in Dubai. An assignment is carried out by a vetted partner operator, with the desk as the single point of contact from the quote to the signature. This page exists because our own dispatchers need the answer for EMA to ALC in the twenty minutes before a promise is made, and a reference only one operator can read is not a reference. Free to read, quote and cite. Found an error? Tell us and we will correct it.
If you need something moved rather than looked up, the desk prices a hand carry in fifteen minutes.
- The EMA airport entry
- The ALC airport entry
- Hand carry into the United Kingdom
- Hand carry into Spain
- The written lane, London to Derby
- The route calculator
More pairs through EMA and ALC: Eindhoven to Alicante, Alicante to Stockholm, Alicante to Oslo, Hamburg to Alicante, Toulouse to Alicante, Bratislava to Alicante, Paris to Alicante, Stavanger to Alicante.