Airport queues thin out as passengers heed website advice to stay away

A RESIGNED calm descended on Dublin airport yesterday as most passengers accepted their fate and the information panels signalled cancellations from 11am.

In the departures area, long queues for information desks in the morning had thinned out by lunchtime as passengers began to heed information to stay away.

By afternoon most of the remaining passengers had flights scheduled to take off between 11am and noon and had followed instructions to turn up as normal for flights.

Sisters Catriona Melia and Marianne Brogan from Coventry were due to fly to Birmingham on Tuesday. Having checked the Ryanair website, they heeded the information to stay away from the airport. Before making the 2½-hour trip by bus from Wexford, they again checked the website and were informed to proceed to the airport for the rebooked flight. “Our flight was at 11.15am and on the website it was still going. It was just the two lads over at security that said no it’s cancelled,” Ms Melia said.

And although she was a “little bit disappointed”, she joked she was “deeply, deeply concerned” about missing out on voting in the UK elections today.

The sisters will return to stay with their mother in Wexford before trying to get out again today. Failing that they will take the ferry tomorrow.

Laurent Arbeit, from the Lycee Marc Bloch in Strasbourg, France, was part of a group of 35 students and teachers over to study English in Dublin. He said his stay in Ireland had been “great” until he learned of his flight’s cancellation.

“As we came in, the screens said the flight wasn’t cancelled. So we were ready to start to go and suddenly it’s not possible.”

Mr Arbeit described the situation as frustrating: “We’ve a big group. We have responsibility and it’s not too easy to find another solution.” The group intended to catch the ferry before arriving home this morning.

Dublin Airport Authority spokeswoman Siobhán Moore said while about 165 flights had managed to take off or land before restrictions were imposed at 11am, roughly 290 flights or 40,000 passengers were affected.

Problems with passengers turning up at the airport were due to the “evolving situation”. She said that while it was known restrictions would be imposed at 11am from midnight before that, they did not know they would be extended until 9am that morning and that had led to passengers turning up. Most of the airport would be shut until 4am today, with some “limited catering facilities” available for remaining passengers.

Three of those who intended to use the facilities were Stefan Van Kooten, Stephan Van Woudenberg and Bart Meyers from the Netherlands. They were resigned to playing cards before having a few beers in the pub.

Mr Van Kooten said he was feeling “very poor” as he would miss his grandmother’s funeral in the Netherlands today. “That’s not the most pleasant thing but there’s nothing to do,” he said.