MAYHEM: Just another Dublin Airport weekend
MORE scenes of ‘mayhem’ have been reported at Dublin Airport this weekend amid staffing shortages, even with some passengers arriving four hours ahead of a short-haul flight ‘cutting it fine’.
Hundreds of passengers have missed flights in recent days after waiting hours at security gates, with the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) scrambling for more staff as passenger numbers return to normal levels after Covid.
Niamh Gibbons from Co. Mayo, arrived four hours ahead of her 6.40am flight to Edinburgh on Friday, as per the advice of an email from Ryanair she received on Thursday.
‘They told everyone to come early so everyone did, but then there were just bigger queues and longer wait times,’ she told the Irish Mail on Sunday.
She waited longer to check her bag in than she did at security, which took around an hour to get through.
‘The staff that were there were really stressed out. You’re getting shouted at and moved around like it’s a cattle mart. It wasn’t very nice at all from the get go.
‘It was stressful as well with the whole Covid thing. Being shoved in together – wedged queues and everything.
‘In particular one guy was shouting at us to hurry up or move or something. We didn’t want to stand unnecessarily close to each other and we kind of said to him, “There’s no need for the extra stress”. But it’s not their fault they’re getting stressed out with everything going on,’ she said. ‘The word was “mayhem”,’ continued Ms Gibbons. ‘Everyone was like, “This is mayhem, ridiculous”.’
‘A lot of tired, cranky people there, queuing for a long time, and then a lot of people running for their flight after they got through security.’ Other passengers had worse luck. Reports on social media suggested that even a fast-track pass can’t be relied on to make a flight, with one Twitter user bemoaning a missed flight despite arriving three hours before departure with a fast-track pass.
Dublin Airport has stopped selling the passes, which allow holders to bypass security queues, but is honouring those already purchased.
It comes as the Department of Transport announced on Friday that it will hold a daily crisis meeting over the queue chaos at the airport.
In a statement, Junior Transport Minister Hildegarde Naughton said she has established a ‘daily crisis management meeting regarding the security queues at Dublin Airport’.
She said she met with Dublin Airport Authority chief executive Dalton Philips and senior management of DAA to discuss the ongoing chaos.
Even a fast-track pass cannot be relied on