what constitutes a regional flight?
 

We're flying Birmingham to Cork and then later ccrk to barcelona. We're trying to do carry on only. the airline(aer lingus) has two different measurements one for regional flights and one for international. My bag is longer than the longest dimension for regional ( they allow 17 but my bag is 20..fine for international but not regional) Can anyone inform me if my flights are regional or international...can't seem to find that info on my ticket.

Call the airline.

International. Ireland is not in the UK

thank-you for the comments...did call.... no people, After looking exhaustively on the rules within the site re baggage, found something about a new company taking over many of aer lingus regional runs . My ticket for the flight has no indication whether my flights are regional or international ....I know here another country constitutes international but perhaps because of the proximity they have an agreement and call it regional....to fly to spain we needed to provide passport info. ahead of time..not so from Birmingham to Ireland.

You are flying between different countries -- they are <u>inter</u>national . . .

According to the Aer Lingus website many international routes (i.e.Cork or Dublin to UK) ARE what they call regional flights.

http://www.aerlingus.com/cgi-bin/obe...2#routenetwork

The link I posted doesn't show Cork-Birmingham but my guess is it's also what AerLingus calls a regional flight.

According to their website they count UK provincial airports (including Birmingham) as regional flights.

If you are UK or Irish citizens you just need picture ID to fly to Ireland, hence they don't request your passport info, if you are any other nationality you need your passport for these flights, to show if requested.

The reason why there are different carry-on restrictions between regional and international flights is that regional flights are operated by smaller aircraft (e.g. turboprop) with limited cabin space. Aer Lingus Regional flights are codeshare and operated by aircraft and crew of Aer Arann: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aer_Lingus_Regional. Your Birmingham to Cork flight will be by Aer Arann on ATR 72 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATR_72-500#ATR_72-500, so the smaller restriction applies.