Dublin Airport: No major delays on busiest post-Covid weekend

There were no big delays at Dublin Airport on Saturday morning much to the relief of its operator DAA.

Senior officials from the DAA, gardaí and airport police were at both terminals from 6am to supervise the security queues through departures that led to 1,400 people missing their flights last weekend.

The tents that were erected outside Terminal 1 to “triage” passengers arriving early for flights and to relieve pressure in the terminal building were not needed.

Airport operator DAA said the maximum queue time was 59 minutes in Terminal 1 and 40 minutes in Terminal 2 before 6am. It said 11 security lanes were open in both terminals from 4am. Queue times at 6.30 were 30 minutes in Terminal 1 and 19 minutes in Terminal 2, it said in a tweet on Saturday morning.

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Although further bank holiday traffic will continue to test the Dublin Airport Authority’s ability to maintain steady flows through security channels, it remained confident of preventing a repeat of last weekend’s debacle.

Gillian Madigan arrived at the airport at 3.20am with her family to take an early morning Aer Lingus flight to Barcelona. Security was supposed to open at 4am, but opened at approximately 3.30am and they were through security by 4am.

The queue built up fast behind them, but moved at a steady pace. All the security gates in Terminal 2 were open.

She described the atmosphere as “very calm — it felt like people had more time on their hands. The food hall in T2 was very busy with people queuing for hot food, took about 30 mins for food.

“All in all, it was a great experience that I cannot fault. Staff were all in great spirits and there was plenty of staff on the floor to help and guide people. We arrived at our gate with lots of time to spare.”

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Fiona Mills, who arrived with her family just before 8am, into Terminal 1 said the Ryanair bag drop was very quick. The queues at Terminal 1 were lengthy but moving.

“It took 20 minutes to get through security. There seems to be loads of people whose bags were cordoned off after security. I have done a lot of travelling but I haven’t seen that many people waiting for their bags before. Perhaps people had forgotten to take the liquids out of their bags,” she said.

“We had a pretty good experience at the airport this morning. It was the first time in my life I was happy flying Ryanair as their bag drop was the most efficient by far! Security was quick.”

The June bank holiday is expected to be the busiest weekend since the start of the pandemic. The first wave of passengers early on Friday morning had adhered to rules, arriving in a window of no more than two-and-a-half hours before the departure of short-haul flights. Many expressed relief things were running smoothly.

“We were straight through [security]. There was no queue outside,” said Nathan Collier (25), en route with about 30 others to a wedding in Poland on Saturday.

Mr Collier, who earlier in the week told The Irish Times of fears they would miss the ceremony should queuing and security checks falter once again, said the experience had been free of stress.

Passenger Rahim Jina tweeted: “From car park in t2 through bag drop and normal security in T2, 50 mins this morning. 8.10 to 9. Much better than expected and a nice end to a weeks [sic] worth of background anticipation stress.”

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Dublin Airport spokesman Kevin Cullinane said they expected that 50,000 people will fly out from the airport on Saturday, one of the busiest days of the year.

“It was an extremely busy first wave this morning,” he said. “The mitigations we put in place have worked. We have had extra staff getting security lanes open. The enhanced queue management as you approach the terminals have been working very well. We have not had to deploy the triage where we would segregate passengers too early. We have taken the learning from last Sunday to ensure that all our passengers makes their flights.”

Since Thursday more than 90,000 passengers have passed through the airport every day and it will peak at 100,500 passengers on Saturday.

He anticipated that the airport will service at least 100,000 passengers every day until next Tuesday. “Every day is an All-Ireland Sunday for us at the moment,” he said.

Chief executive Dalton Philips said the situation was “delicate”, with management continuing to hire security staff as quickly as possible to avoid the need for flight cancellations in the weeks ahead.

While 200 additional staff have been recruited to date, a further 100 are required to process the anticipated level of holiday travel.

“We are in a very delicate situation because when you are down the required numbers of officers you need, like last weekend, you can have a very rapid build-up of queues. We are in a very tight situation,” Mr Philips told RTÉ's News.

With the Authority coming under intense political pressure during the week, steps have been taken to ward off further crises. Coverings have been installed outside the terminals to accommodate hundreds of passengers in busy times.