The long delays at Dublin Airport are “not going to get better any time soon”, according to travel expert Eoghan Corry.
Passengers are being advised to arrive at least three-and-a-half hours before take-off after long queues in recent days saw many people missing their flights.
The airport chaos hit national headlines last weekend and, while things have been running better during the week, this weekend is set to be busier than last.
The airport expects this weekend’s passenger load to be up to one-quarter higher than least weekends – with things likely to get busier from there on in.
"Perfect storm"
On The Hard Shoulder this evening, Travel Extra Editor Eoghan Corry said airport is facing a perfect storm of problems that “don’t have an easy fix”.
“What happened last weekend when it became an issue is that the summer schedule, which would include up to three times the number of flights the winter schedule would have, had kicked in,” he said.
“Now it kicked in at a time of a perfect storm. Dublin Airport put out a statement last Sunday saying 1,000 people left during the pandemic.
“On January 1st, new security regulations came through and it takes about six weeks to put a recruited security office to work.
“There was also a system where a lot of the existing passes in the Dublin Airport all had to be renewed which created a backlog and on top of that, we had the COVID situation which every business has been hit by.”
Rostering heavily
He said airport authorities have been “rostering heavily” through the week to ensure this weekend works out better for passengers.
“They have rostering to ensure they can meet the peak time - that 6am to 9am rush hour - and they have been bringing staff from other areas of the airport back to security, if they have experiencing in security,” her said.
“They have also been putting those that don’t have security experience into positions to help the queues - information, checking boarding passes that sort of thing.”
Sticking plaster
Mr Corry said several airlines have agreed to open their check-in desks earlier over the coming days but warned that at the end of that day, “it’s little bits of sticking plaster around the major problem”.
He said the official advice is to arrive two hours before a short-haul flight and three before a long-haul flight but warned that you really need to add an hour to that now.
“It’s not going to get better any time soon,” he said. “The COVID situation is not to be ignored either because that’s something where, you can roster away to meet your peaks and your valleys but if you have an outbreak of COVID amongst several staff, there’s no way around it.”
Airports
He said about a dozen airports around Europe are experiencing similar issues and “there are further issues coming down the track” as summer gets into full swing.
Meanwhile, the Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary has called for the Army to be drafted in to help deal with the long queues.
Meanwhile SIPTU has warned that the airport let too many people go under a voluntary severance scheme and has struggled to replace them, potentially “due to the terms and conditions that are being offered".
