Regulator doesn’t have delay figures for airport bedlam
Details released on every weekend... EXCEPT the one with worst chaos
THE aviation regulator has said it is unable to provide figures for how many times the DAA breached security queue times on the chaotic weekend that saw 1,500 people miss flights.
The Irish Daily Mail learned the DAA breached guidelines for maximum security queue waiting times at Dublin Airport nearly 400 times between March and June this year.
But that does not include the weekend of May 28 and 29, when security delays saw massive queues forming outside the terminal building in a disaster that made international headlines.
Labour party Transport spokesman Duncan Smith has criticised the Commission for Aviation Regulation (CAR) for failing to provide the figures and said the DAA must face fines for the breaches.
He told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘All figures in relation to delay queue times, staffing levels and the impact on passengers should be available for every date that the airport is open.
‘Especially for that weekend where everything collapsed.
‘The figure [for the number of breaches] is very high. But it would not surprise me if the true figure was higher.’
CAR said yesterday it has not yet decided if the DAA will face fines for the breaches.
A spokeswoman added: ‘We have yet to consider possible extenuating circumstances in relation to events since the start of the summer season.’
Mr Smith commented: ‘I’d be interested to see if the DAA will actually be subject to penalties for the breaches. In my view, they should be. They have admitted
‘They admitted that it’s their fault’
that it’s their fault that they made mistakes in terms of staffing and there needs to be consequences for this, given the disruption to the public.’
CAR previously agreed to waive penalties up to March of this year but warned that it is ‘less likely to waive adjustments unless extraordinary circumstances exist’ after March 27.
Fines are applied at the end of the year and are based on the number of people who travel through the airport in total, not how many people were delayed.
The total potential penalty for security queue performance for the year is capped at 11c per passenger.
The penalty for waiting times lasting longer than 45 minutes is 1c per passenger, while waiting times longer than half an hour incur a fine of half a cent.
New documents released to the Mail under Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation show that maximum security times were exceeded on 368 occasions between March 4, 2022 and June 7, 2022.
There were 55 breaches in March, 134 breaches in April and 142 breaches in May that saw passengers waiting in line for security for more than 30 minutes.
Up to June 7, there had been 37 breaches. Wait times exceeded 45 minutes on 70 occasions, the documents show.
On Sunday May 29, the DAA advised passengers who were queuing outside the airport terminals that they would not make their flight.
It is estimated that 1,500 people missed a flight.
However, the number of breaches for this weekend are excluded from the documents released to the Mail under FOI.
The decision-maker in CAR later confirmed they did not have ‘email records providing the breach statistics for May 28 and 29 2022’. This means that the number of breaches reported by the DAA is likely far higher than 368. Following the chaotic weekend, DAA bosses appeared in front of the Oireachtas Transport Committee to outline its plans to avoid another weekend of chaos over the June Bank Holiday weekend.
This included rostering 40 additional staff members, opening additional security lanes and ‘triaging’ passengers through the airport. In total, there were 17 breaches reported between Friday June 3 and Monday June 6.
In Terminal 1 on Saturday, June 4 between 3.13am and 6.36am, passengers were forced to queue for 59 minutes to get through security. The longest wait time was on April 6 when security wait times were 82 minutes.
CAR told the Mail ‘the Commission has a comprehensive set of service quality metrics which have targets’.
However, they stated they have not yet considered whether fines will be levied on the DAA because of the long security waits.
They said: ‘If those targets are not met, associated financial adjustments may be applied. Due to the pandemic this regime was suspended from March 2020 until December 2021.
‘From 1 January 2022, a scaleddown version was put in place which included security queue measures. Due to the high level of staff absences at Dublin Airport due to Covid in January, February and March of this year, the Commission waived the potential effect on the maximum level of per passenger airport charge.’
The spokeswoman said penalties will be decided at the end of the year ‘when the full year performance is known’.
Graeme McQueen, media relations manager at the DAA, said: ‘Recent weeks have seen a significant improvement in the time it is taking passengers to pass through security at Dublin Airport.
‘In June when we welcomed more than 2.8 million travellers, three out of every four passengers went through security in less than 30 minutes.’