Hundreds of Aer Lingus passengers were forced to queue outside Terminal 2 at Dublin Airport when the airline cancelled all of its flights on Saturday afternoon.
The announcement, made at 2.30pm and blamed on a computer software problem, has potentially left thousands of passengers without flights.
Passenger Michael O’Reilly, who was flying to Nice, said it was “chaos” outside the airport when the announcement came. “They didn’t have enough places to put everybody and there was no information.”
Passengers complained of the lack of information about what they were supposed to be doing. At Terminal 2, from where all Aer Lingus flights depart, there were periodic announcements that passengers should go online to rebook their tickets.
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“We can’t go online to rebook because the system is not back up and running,” said Neil Brannelly who was travelling to Nice. He and his partner Rachel Harold arrived at the airport at 8.30am for a 11.30am flight. They were still waiting at 5pm in the evening, with no sign of their flight departing.
“We have a two- or three-hour transfer at the other end. At some point they are not going to pick us up. We have no information,” said another passenger headed to Nice, Shauna Darcy.
Rachel Colgan, her husband Brian and her nine-month-old son Max decided to leave the airport and return home to Dunshaughlin, Co Meath.
They were flying on an Aer Lingus flight to Malaga at 11.45am. “We got there at 9.15am. We were queuing assuming it was just busy. We were told there was going to be a bit of a wait, but we would get our flight. We said that was fine,” she said.
“We were waiting for five hours before we were told it was cancelled. It is horrendous. The staff are stressed and don’t know what is going on. There is just no clarity. I’m shocked there is no backup plan. Things like this happen, but there is no preparation for it.”
Some flights are being manually rebooked but the process is very slow. Flights are being booked to French airports because you do not need to input passport details at the check in, while Spanish flights are being cancelled because you do have to do that.
Mary Browne, who is travelling to Bilbao in Spain, said those who had just hand luggage will be able to get on the flight tonight, but there are no check-in facilities available for baggage for Aer Lingus passengers at Dublin Airport and she may not be able to travel.
There was cheering in the terminal when it was announced that flights to New York and Boston were back up and running, but others were still waiting.
Stephen Graham from Ballymena, Co Antrim, who is travelling to Los Angeles with three members of his family, said they will be stranded if their flight does not take off as there are no buses back to Belfast tonight because of the Garth Brooks concert, and no place to stay in Dublin either.
“I’ve been on the Aer Lingus site between 25 to 30 times but it keeps crashing. There doesn’t seem to be any alternative flights.” The family are due to go to a Duran Duran concert in Los Angeles on Sunday and Las Vegas next week.
Six Spanish surfers who flew from Abu Dhabi to Malaga via Dublin are now stuck in Dublin. “We don’t know what we are going to do because Aer Lingus have told us that the hotels are full,” said Rafael Garcia de Angulo.
