Sir, – I recently travelled back to London through Dublin Airport’s Terminal 2 after a day-long business trip. I got through security checks quite quickly but there was only one queue open. Once through duty-free, I was disappointed to find virtually all shops closed, aside from a couple of coffee shops, and it was only 6pm. There was nowhere open to get a substantial meal or drink other than sandwiches and coffee after a long day of busy meetings in the city centre.
With little else to do, I wandered down to the gates to wait for my flight. There were large amounts of discarded litter everywhere from earlier flights left all over the seats and the toilet facilities clearly had not been cleaned properly or recently. It was unpleasant.
When my flight boarded, a clearly tired worker was left to staff the entire boarding process by herself. Few other staff were spotted during my time waiting to board.
A lot of recent media coverage has been rightly directed at the early morning rush-hour queues but evening weekday travel also leaves a lot to be desired. The airport environment at the end of that day was truly pitiful. It felt to me that the signs of stress on the airport were most visible to what were mostly business travellers heading home at that time of day.
It really does not leave a good impression of Ireland for those visitors at the end of their journeys. – Yours, etc,
IAN O’MARA,
Chiswick,
London.
Sir, – My wife and I had occasion to pass through Dublin Airport recently en route to Milan Malpensa Airport. We are in our late 70s and early 80s and, in view of our ages and some health issues, we booked travel assistance to get from baggage check-in to embarkation gates.
The young man at the travel assist booth checked our details and asked us to take a seat, which we did. Having waited for 15 minutes without any progress, we asked if we went for lunch would it be possible to be collected from the restaurant area.
We were informed that it would not be possible as he had no one available at the time and anyway there were four people waiting ahead of us.
As we had travelled to Dublin Airport by public transport, which took 2½ hours, and since we had not eaten since early morning, and it was by then 3pm, we decided to abandon the travel assist.
The burger was passable but the few chips I was given were scraped off the bottom of the frier.
We eventually made our way to the embarkation gates without assistance, which we found to be quite stressful.
We were disappointed by the unhelpful attitude of staff who clearly lack proper training as to how to give a satisfactory level of service to the travelling public. Their demeanour and attitude project a very poor image of this country to anyone arriving for the first time.
When compared to the level of service and food standard which we experienced in Milan Malpensa, it must be said that Dublin Airport is sadly lacking and is direly in need of proper service training and staff motivational training.
I for one will never travel via Dublin Airport again nor would I recommend it to any of my friends. I also fail to understand why DAA advertises its “services” in our local papers when we have a perfectly good, underused airport 20 minutes by car from here in Limerick. – Yours, etc,
ANTOINE Ó DRISCEOIL,
Luimneach.