WHY DUBLIN AIRPORT IS FANTASTIC, AND NOT JUST AT CHRISTMAS
The staff are brilliant – and Terminal 2 really is a thing of beauty
It has featured in all the newspapers over the festive season. We’ve seen the joyful photos and read all the tales of anticipation and subsequent happiness. It played host to television cameramen aplenty and to radio broadcasters who opted to do their shows from there. Its staff, on one particular day, even helped facilitate a marriage proposal.
That’s Dublin Airport. A place that every year seems to come into its own at Christmas.
But, no more than the puppies and the kittens of this world, Dublin Airport isn’t just for Christmas. For here is an airport that excels itself all year round.
In 2015 I used Dublin Airport on seven occasions – 14 times through the airport, but seven trips, if you know what I mean. I flew from both Terminal 1 and Terminal 2. Not once did I have a problem. Not with the car-parking, not with security, not with boarding, not with passport control, not with the ‘Shop & Collect’ service.
The thing about Dublin Airport is that it works. It’s
also big enough to give you that excitement factor that you inevitably get from an international airport, but also small enough to make you feel secure and not too swamped by the experience.
And, let’s face it, compared to a number of airports I have recently frequented (Gatwick, dear God, Gatwick… how antiquated and disorganised is Gatwick?), Dublin Airport is a dream.
Okay, the revamp that will soon get under way in the arrivals area of Terminal 1 is not before time, but they have already been improving the airside part of that terminal, so at least there is a plan in place. The right hand, in Dublin Airport Authority terms, appears to know what the left hand is doing, in other words. Not something that we can always take for granted in Irish life.
And Terminal 2? Well, Terminal 2 is, to me, and with apologies to Mr Keats, ‘a thing of beauty and a joy forever’. I simply love Terminal 2. End of story. How could you not?
Decades ago, the airport at Collinstown, as it used to be known, was like a magnet for Dublin families. Countless mothers and fathers took their children there at weekends to watch the planes take off and land, to watch the people, and to try to cash in, if only for a few hours, on that sense of excitement that air travel generated.
But whatever about the nostalgia factor, or the aesthetics of the place, the thing that is impressive about Dublin Airport is that it works. Very well. And also that there is generally a sense of common courtesy from the staff employed there.
I have come across it countless times over the years. That sense of humanity that is far from the norm in many airports around the world.
Only a month ago I encountered it again. Travelling through Terminal 1, very early on a Friday morning, I had very precious contents in my carryon luggage. My husband’s ashes, destined for Venice.
Naturally, despite knowing that it was all perfectly above board to do what I was doing, and also sure that I had the correct documentation in my possession, I was somewhat uptight.
I had booked Fast Track for security (surely the best €5.95 you could ever spend?) as an additional precaution. And do you know what? The experience was flawless. More than that – at 5.45 in the morning, the staff were both courteous and kind.
Dublin Airport. Not just a Christmas cracker, but a winner, in my book, every single month of the year.
‘That humanity is far from the norm in many airports’