UK Domestic Flights: What You Actually Need to Know Before You Book

There is something faintly ridiculous about flying from London to Edinburgh, a journey that takes roughly the same amount of time whether you fly or take the train once you count getting to the airport, going through security, and waiting at the gate, and yet millions of people do it every year anyway, myself occasionally included, because sometimes you just want to be somewhere else in an hour and pretend the getting-there part doesn't count. This is a guide to doing that properly, with the actual current rules, not the rules from three governments ago.

Why People Still Fly Within the UK

The honest case for a domestic flight over a train is narrower than it used to be, but it's real. If you're going somewhere the rail network genuinely struggles to reach quickly, the Scottish Highlands, the Channel Islands, Belfast from the south of England, flying still wins by a wide margin. For the marquee route, London to Edinburgh, the flight itself takes about an hour and fifteen minutes, but by the time you've gotten to the airport, cleared security, and collected a bag on the other end, the total door-to-door time isn't wildly different from the direct train, which now runs closer to four hours and twenty minutes on the East Coast line. The plane wins on raw speed. The train wins on convenience, city-centre to city-centre, no security theatre, and considerably less carbon, a direct London-Edinburgh train produces a small fraction of the CO2 per passenger that the equivalent flight does. Neither fact should embarrass you into a decision. Just make it with your eyes open.

What's Actually Changed: The Money Part

Air Passenger Duty, the tax baked into every UK flight, is going up again. From the 1st of April 2026, the reduced rate on domestic flights, the one that applies to ordinary economy seats, rises from £7 to £8, with the standard rate for anything above the lowest cabin class climbing from £14 to £16. It's not a dramatic jump on its own, a couple of pounds here and there, but it stacks on top of years of similar increases, and it's worth knowing the number has moved again before you're surprised by it at checkout. Private jet passengers, for what it's worth, are absorbing a considerably larger hike, north of fifty percent on the higher rate, which is the kind of detail that makes for decent pub trivia even if it doesn't affect your Ryanair booking.

What's Actually Changed: The ID Part

Here's a genuinely interesting update, and it involves a small piece of British political drama that ended up mattering for anyone flying domestically. For the past year, the government had been pushing a mandatory digital ID scheme, nicknamed the BritCard, partly framed as a tool for verifying the right to work in the UK. It faced enormous pushback, a petition against it gathered nearly three million signatures, and the government backed off making it compulsory back in January. Then, this past July, incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham cancelled the whole thing days into taking office, redirecting its budget toward cutting VAT on household electricity bills instead. Which is a very British way to resolve a surveillance debate: not with a philosophical victory for civil liberties, but with cheaper heating bills winning a public poll.

What this means practically for flying is that nothing has actually changed about how you prove who you are at the gate, but it's worth knowing the "digital ID coming soon" story that's been circulating is, for now, dead. What you'll actually need remains what airlines have required for a couple of years now: valid government-issued photo ID for every adult passenger on a domestic flight. A passport works, and an expired one is still accepted for up to five years past its date. A full or provisional photo driving licence works. A valid EU or Swiss national photo ID card, an armed forces ID, or a police warrant card will all get you through. You do not need a passport specifically, despite what a lot of people assume, and children under sixteen generally don't need to show anything at all when traveling with an adult. Unaccompanied travellers aged twelve to fifteen checking a bag are the one group who will need ID of their own.

The UK's Main Domestic Carriers

British Airways remains the premium, full-service choice for domestic routes, with a free cabin bag included and the widest network out of Heathrow. easyJet and Ryanair cover the budget end, with easyJet generally offering a slightly broader domestic UK network and Ryanair leaning more heavily into international short-haul, so check the specific route before assuming Ryanair is your cheapest option within Britain itself. Loganair is the one to know for Scotland and the more remote regional routes, connecting islands and Highland towns that larger carriers don't bother with. Jet2 is worth a mention but with a caveat: it's primarily a package-holiday airline built around leisure destinations abroad, so its purely domestic point-to-point options are thinner than the others on this list.

How to Actually Find a Cheap Domestic Flight

Book ahead, since prices climb the closer you get to departure, and this is truer on popular routes like London to Edinburgh or Glasgow than almost anywhere else in UK aviation. Fly midweek if your schedule allows it, since Friday evenings and Sunday nights carry the same demand premium domestically that they do everywhere else. Compare across a proper flight search tool rather than checking one airline's site and calling it done, since fares on the same route can vary considerably between carriers flying the exact same hour. Pack light enough to avoid checked-bag fees, which on a short domestic hop can occasionally cost more than the ticket itself. And if you're a student or under a certain age, it's always worth a quick check for youth fares, since several UK carriers still run them quietly rather than advertising them front and centre.

Popular Routes Worth Knowing

London to Edinburgh remains the busiest domestic route in the country by a wide margin, alongside London to Glasgow, both of which also happen to be the routes most often cited whenever anyone proposes banning short domestic flights in favour of rail, a policy France has already adopted for its own short hops and the UK has discussed and quietly shelved more than once. Manchester to Belfast skips a ferry crossing entirely and gets you there in under an hour. Bristol to Newcastle is a genuinely useful north-south connector that the train struggles to match for speed. Birmingham to Glasgow is fast and reliably affordable. And London to the Isle of Man remains one of the more charming, underused domestic routes in the country, worth booking on its own merits rather than as a means to somewhere else.

The Bottom Line

Flying within the UK still makes sense for the routes rail genuinely can't serve well, and it's gotten neither meaningfully cheaper nor meaningfully more complicated this year, just a couple of pounds pricier in tax and no closer to needing a digital ID that, as of this summer, officially isn't happening. Bring a passport or a photo driving licence, book ahead of the crowd, and decide honestly whether the hour in the air is actually saving you anything once you count everything on either side of it.