How far is Belfast from Galway? Here's the quick answer if you are able to make this entire trip by car without stopping.
Nonstop drive: 229 miles or 369 km
Driving time: 3 hours, 58 minutes
Realistically, you'll probably want to add a buffer for rest stops, gas, or food along the way. To get a better idea of how long this trip would really be, scroll down to calculate how many hours it would take if you drive with stops.
Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Galway, Ireland and Belfast, United Kingdom. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula.
Flight distance: 156 miles or 251 km
Flight time: 49 minutes
The straight line flight distance is 73 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.5x of the flight distance.
Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/5th of the time it would take to drive.
This is a relatively short flight in a private plane, but you might be planning to book a commercial flight. In that case, your travel time would really need to include how many minutes to get to your local airport, wait for security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the other airport, and get to your destination. Scroll down to see a more realistic calculation that takes into account all these factors to get a more accurate estimate of your actual flight time.
Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Belfast, and you want to stop on the way to explore. If it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting places along the way, or maybe eat at a great restaurant. That's what Trippy is perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.
Road trip: 1 day of driving
With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.
Travel time: 5.5 hours on the road
Itinerary
Start in Galway.
Drive for about 1 hour, then stop at Clonmacnoise and stay for about 1 hour.
Next, drive for another 42 minutes then stop in Mullingar and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 39 minutes then stop at Trim Castle and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 40 minutes then stop in Dublin and stay for 2 hours.
Drive for 39 minutes then stop at Newgrange and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 52 minutes then stop at Silent Valley and stay for 1 hour.
Finally, drive for about 48 minutes and arrive in Belfast.
To see all the details on this itinerary, including recommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do along the way, check out the full road trip planner:
In the quick calculation above, we assumed you had a private plane and just wanted to know the time in the air from city to city. But for most of us, we're going to be flying on a commercial airline (whether it's first class or coach). So that means we really need to account for all the extra travel time getting to the airport, waiting for our flight, and making it to the destination.
To give you a better estimate of real-life travel, we've put together a flight itinerary with actual airports. Eventually you'll be able to customize this plan, choosing your own airports and flights. But for now, here's an example we've selected to give you an idea of how traveling might work between airports.
Departure airport: Shannon Airport (SNN)
Arrival airport: George Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)
With the airports selected, we can estimate the travel time to and from the airport, based on how far the airport is from downtown.
Getting to the airport: 119 minutes
Getting to your destination: 11 minutes
Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from SNN connecting through LHR and arriving at BHD flying on Aer Lingus. We can figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, time to taxi on the runways, and an average layover time of about 2 hours.
Initial flight time: 1 hour, 14 minutes
Connecting airport: London Heathrow Airport (LHR)
Connection flight time: 1 hour, 8 minutes
So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Galway to Belfast including time spent getting to and from the airports, roughly 2 hours at the departure airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, plus the connecting flight with a 2-hour layover.
Total travel time: 9 hours
To see the details on this flight plan, including recommended airports, airline, and route, check out the flight planner:
Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to Belfast, United Kingdom. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in Belfast. If you're looking for a place to stay, you might want to check out The Merchant Hotel. Trippy members can suggest things to do in Belfast like Belfast. Check out some of the questions people have asked about Belfast like What is your favorite restaurant in Belfast?. Click the button below to explore Belfast in detail.
The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line (or driving the same roads back and forth). But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from Belfast to Galway, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.
If you happen to know Galway, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Galway!
More info on this route:
drive from Galway to Belfast
road conditions
alternate routes
Google driving directions