The chaos and the confusion at Dublin Airport over the weekend extended far beyond the security checkpoints and was evident outside of the rush hour window of early morning departures, according to one man who missed a flight on Saturday and struggled to find anyone to tell him what he needed to do next.
The would-be passenger, who asked to be identified only as John, was dropped off by taxi at 3.30pm on Saturday and joined a queue outside the building to enter Terminal 1.
“This queue operated in roped lines which were facilitated by blocking off lanes usually available to taxis/cars dropping off passengers,” he told The Irish Times.
He and his travelling companions had checked in online on Friday and printed the boarding cards so only needed to drop checked-in baggage which they did some 35 minutes after joining their first queue.
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“We immediately joined a roped queue to get to the boarding gates, where our pre-printed boarding cards were scanned. We were told, on inquiry, that the sporadic movement, followed by periods of no movement, arose because there was a limit on the numbers which could be allowed to enter the security area at any one time,” he said.
He said he inquired several times to the “very few visible staff around the queuing area” as to what they need to do as their flight time was getting closer.
“While the answers were not helpful, one couldn’t but be sympathetic towards some of these staff who were under enormous stress as they felt impotent and could offer no credible answers. Indeed the stress got to some of them and they were quite short with passengers,” he said.
Eventually he made it through security and to the departure gate.
It was closed.
He said there was no one available “to advise on what we could do at that point as we had checked baggage on board and we had no idea how or where we might find it”.
He approached a member of airport staff and was told to go to the baggage hall where he his bags would be delivered.
“We did that, but there was absolutely no indication of where or when they would be delivered. We then queued again at the very lightly staffed airline desk, which was overwhelmed by the number of passengers missing luggage from an earlier flight.”
Eventually he found out that the bags for passengers who had missed flights were normally delivered to a certain carousel and he was able to retrieve the luggage.
He left the airport more than four hours after he had arrived but the delays did not end there.
“We queued again for a taxi for about half an hour to get us home, with our net position on arriving home a cost of €80 for taxis and 5 hours of utter misery,” he said.
He said that aside from his own disappointment at missing a trip to visit family overseas, he “witnessed several very distressed passengers — young and older — crying openly in frustration and worrying about how they were going to cope with missing their flights.
“We saw many passengers in their 70s and beyond, like ourselves, and some looked like they might faint or just lie down on the floor at any moment.
“If daa can’t cope in providing a service, I suggest that they should at least ensure that people don’t become dehydrated by being confined in a hot queue for hours. If anyone was thinking of their customers, they should have distributed bottles of water as a minimum. It would also be nice to have somewhere to sit.”
He said he could not see how “a critical service like this could be so thoroughly overwhelmed”.
He added that it was “particularly galling that nobody in authority was visible at any stage today. The least any leader should do is to apologise for the appalling service or to explain what was going on. Sadly, that was left to frazzled staff who had no answers. Is there any leadership in daa, or was this seen as nothing exceptional in terms of service? What a scary thought.”
