A resigned calm descended on Dublin airport today as most passengers accepted their fate as the overhead information panels signalled cancellations across the board from 11am.
In the departures area long queues for information desks in the morning thinned out by lunchtime as passengers began to heed airline information to stay away. By afternoon most of the passengers left stranded had flights scheduled to take off between 11am and 12pm and had followed instructions to turn up for their flight.
Sisters Catriona Melia and Marianne Brogan from Coventry were due to fly to Birmingham yesterday however having checked the Ryanair website they were told not to go to the airport. After rebooking their flight for today and before making the two and a half hour trip by bus from Wexford they again checked the website and were informed to proceed to the airport.
“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” to learn her flight was cancelled this morning 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 tomorrow, failing that they will take the ferry on Friday.
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 they learned of their flights cancellation today.
He said: “We were told to come in and 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 saying “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 overnight before arriving home tomorrow morning.
DAA spokeswoman Siobhán Moore said while around 165 flights had managed to take off or land before restrictions were imposed at 11am roughly 290 flights or 40,000 passengers were affected by the cancellations.
Problems with passengers turning up at the airport had happened due to the “evolving situation”. She said while it was known restrictions would be imposed at 11am from midnight yesterday they did not know if they would be extended all day until 9am that morning.
She added that most of the airport is shut until 4am today just some “limited catering facilities” available landside for passengers remaining.