The sector is held by Antrak Air and Ryanair UK.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
EMA Derby and Nottingham to BFS Belfast
East Midlands Airport, the United Kingdom, to Belfast International, the United Kingdom. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- About twice a day
- Great circle
- 380 km
- Block, estimated
- 1h 04m
- Door to door
- 7h 49m
What EMA to BFS looks like
The EMA to BFS sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Derby and Nottingham EMA to Belfast BFS is a short sector of 380 km by great circle, flown nonstop about twice a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 380 km, 720 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 1h 04m.
Derby and Nottingham EMA is a large airport in the network held here, 91 scheduled destinations and 74.6 departures a day. Belfast BFS has 47 destinations and 74.9 departures a day.
Derby and Nottingham and Belfast keep the same clock all year, so the arrival time is the departure time plus the block and nothing else.
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 BFS from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| EMA to BFS | 2.86 | 20 | Antrak Air, Ryanair UK |
| BFS to EMA | 2.43 | 17 | Antrak Air, Ryanair UK |
Two carriers hold the sector, Antrak Air and Ryanair UK, which gives a missed departure somewhere to go without leaving the nonstop.
Between them the two directions put about 37 departures a week on EMA to BFS, 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 1h 04m block time on EMA to BFS. 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 BFS in the air, estimated | 64 min | 5h 34m |
| Formalities at BFS | 90 min | 7h 04m |
| Delivery run in Belfast | 45 min | 7h 49m |
| Door to door | 469 min | 7h 49m |
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 BFS is 7h 49m.
A courier who leaves Derby and Nottingham at 09:00 local is on the ground in Belfast at about 10:04 local and at the door by 12:19 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Belfast, the last useful departure from Derby and Nottingham is around 14:41 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. 26 of them join EMA to BFS.
| Connecting at | EMA to hub, flights a day | Hub to BFS, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manchester MAN | 1 | 6.29 | 381 | 3h 04m |
| Edinburgh EDI | 1.57 | 6 | 601 | 3h 08m |
| Paris CDG | 0.57 | 1.14 | 1,373 | 4h 22m |
| Barcelona BCN | 1.29 | 0.71 | 2,914 | 6h 13m |
| Ibiza IBZ | 1.43 | 0.86 | 3,411 | 6h 21m |
| Krakow KRK | 0.86 | 0.57 | 3,314 | 6h 29m |
One nonstop a day means one chance a day, so the connections below are what a consignment that arrives at EMA in the afternoon actually flies on.
26 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Manchester MAN, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about once a day.
Through MAN the routing covers 381 km against the 380 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 04m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 90 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 2h 00m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Edinburgh EDI at 3h 08m and Paris CDG at 4h 22m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
The two ends are only 380 km apart in a straight line. Allowing a road track a quarter longer than that and eighty kilometres an hour, a car covers it in about 5h 56m, so a courier who misses the flight drives rather than connects, and on a short deadline the road is often the plan from the start.
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 Belfast, Dublin DUB is 137 km away by great circle and carries 198 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 BFS. 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 Belfast 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 BFS 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 BFS airport entry
- Hand carry into the United Kingdom
- The written lane, London to Derby
- The route calculator
More pairs through EMA and BFS: Birmingham to Belfast, Glasgow to Belfast, Liverpool to Belfast, Belfast to Bristol, Newcastle to Belfast, Dublin to Derby and Nottingham, Barcelona to Derby and Nottingham, Derby and Nottingham to Manchester.