Dublin Airport: Outdoor queuing area installed as 200,000 weekend passengers expected

Dublin Airport on Thursday closed the departures road outside Terminal 1 to allow for the installation of covered passenger queuing areas in preparation for a fresh surge in traveller numbers.

More than 200,000 passengers are expected to go through the airport over the weekend, and there are fears of similar scenes to those that led to more than 1,400 people missing flights last Sunday.

It is “clear now” Dublin Airport “made a mistake” in terms of the number of staff it let go during the Covid-19 pandemic, and there are “no guarantees” the chaos that unfolded last Sunday will not be repeated over the weekend, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan said on Thursday.

The airport said the covered areas will be in place and available to provide shelter for passengers from the early hours of Friday morning. Passenger drop-off has moved to the airport’s Atrium Road. This will remain the case for the coming weeks.

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Staff at the airport have been instructed to only move passengers who arrive too early for flights into the new designated holding areas outside the terminals if queues start to build at busy times.

Graeme McQueen, media relations manager at Dublin Airport, said staff would move people into the holding zones if there was a “build-up of the numbers” in queues at the airport terminals.

Should queues build up in the terminals and spill outside, staff will check boarding cards or booking confirmations and direct those who arrived too early to the holding areas.

“This isn’t about holding people back unnecessarily,” said Mr McQueen. “We will only do this if we absolutely have to. The whole aim is to make sure that nobody misses a flight this weekend.”

Sinn Féin deputy leader Pearse Doherty said in the Dáil the “crazy scenes” at the airport on Sunday were “a national embarrassment”. Mr Doherty said DAA, which operates Dublin Airport, had laid off 1,000 workers over the course of the pandemic and that the Government had “sanctioned this level of redundancy”.

Mr Ryan said 225 new staff were being put in place and DAA had promised to hire a further 100 staff.

“We will do whatever we can in government to support them,” he said. “[The DAA] also made a mistake. I think it was in May 2020, when the original decision was made to apply the redundancy scheme — too many workers were let off, that is clear now.”

DAA told The Irish Times media organisations would not be allowed into terminals on Friday as the new measures took effect. “Due to operational reasons, as there will be a large volume heading through the terminals, we are limiting all media to outside of the terminals for the weekend,” DAA said in a statement.