So I'm booking a trip from the US to Portugal and am traveling light (carry-on and personal item only). I see the Aer Lingus (which from my research, says that it's Ireland's home airline I guess) but I've also noticed their basic economy fares are quite a bit cheaper than say that of Delta, United, Air Canada and even Portugal's own TAP Air Portugal. I'd be flying economy with a carry-on and personal item and am OK with economy as I see air travel as mostly just a means of transportation so I don't sweet the small stuff, except obivously when it comes to safety, which is my biggest concern here. (ie. the amentities like wi-fi and entertainment onboard I don't care about.)

Thoughts on flying with Aer Lingus? I mean for the most part, when I checked my travel dates, I was seeing price differences of about $200-$250, which IMO is pretty significant difference. My biggest concern here is mostly safety though as I've mainly stuck to major US airlines in the past like United, Southwest, and even Spirit and had no real issues there (but being a smaller budget foreign airline I'm just a bit more cautious I guess).

Aer Lingus is a large, very long standing airline which partners with BA/AA Alaska/ Iberia etc etc etc. . It certainly is not a "smaller budget foreign airline". I have no idea why you'd have safety concerns??

While I'm not fond of flying single aisle planes across the Atlantic, every time I've flown Aer Lingus we landed on time and safely. Aer Lingus operates an all-Airbus fleet fwiw.

Aer Lingus is a subsidiary of the much large IAG, which also owns BA, Iberia, and Vueling, close to 600 aircraft total, and flies over 100M passgengers a year. One of the reasons Aer Lingus offers low cost / fewer frills fares is that they compete head to head out of Dublin with RyanAir.

Aer Lingus is far from a "small foreign budget airline" and you need not have a concern about safety.

I flew Aer Lingus last year and there's no question I would fly them again. They have to meet the same safety standards as the US based airlines so there is no reason why you need to worry about safety. An airline is not less safe for the simple reasons that they're not US based and they're less expensive.

Let me add one other thing, and this is about the Dublin airport, not Aer Lingus. When you're coming home, you will clear US customs and TSA in Dublin. This is very time consuming so don't piddle around the airport on your way home. Go directly to the US pre-clearance area and get through the lines. The lines might be longer and slower than they seem, and having Global Entry won't help much.

The good news is when you get to the US, you've already gone through customs so you just step off the plane and into the public as if it were a domestic flight.

Solid airline; would use them in a minute!