Closure of airports raises travel concerns

DUBLIN AIRPORT closed for a period last night, raising concerns about the effects of the weather on Christmas travel plans as almost one million passengers were scheduled to travel through the Republic’s airports over the holidays.

In Shannon, hundreds of stranded airline passengers spent a third unscheduled night in the midwest after their flights were grounded on Saturday when Heathrow airport was closed by snow.

The closure of Heathrow resulted in flights from Nigeria, Japan, Canada and the US diverting to Shannon. More than 2,300 travellers spent Saturday and Sunday night in hotels across Clare and Limerick, providing a welcome boost for hoteliers, shops and bus operators in the region.

Passengers have been strongly advised to consult their airlines before travelling to airports because of knock-on delays.

Ryanair put on a number of extra flights in an attempt to clear the backlog yesterday, but Aer Arann had to cancel a number of its services, including Ireland West Airport Knock to Dublin, Sligo to Dublin and Dublin to Sligo.

Ireland West airport said it expected to see 20,000 passengers use the airport in the week to December 24th, divided equally between inbound and outbound.

With weather conditions at the airports at best uncertain over the coming days, Stena Line issued a statement saying it had experienced a “substantial” increase in passengers travelling on its Irish Sea routes over the last few days.

Communications manager Eamonn Hewitt said from December 20th to January 5th, the shipping line would carry 108,000 passengers across five Irish Sea routes – 45,000 of whom would be on the Dublin Port to Holyhead and Dún Laoghaire to Holyhead routes, and 16,000 on the Rosslare to Fishguard route.

He said all sailings were operating as scheduled and Stena Line had brought in extra staff to help accommodate the uplift in customers.

Passengers should not leave booking to the last minute.

A spokeswoman for Irish Ferries said as the company was a plc, it was not appropriate to give passenger numbers. Passengers may access up-to-date information on irishferries.ie, where there is a link to the company’s Twitter page.

Barry Kenny of Iarnród Éireann said all services were expected to operate over the next few days. He said the company expected to carry about 300,000 people home for Christmas on its routes.

Bus Éireann said most of its services were expected to run, but passengers were asked to check in advance, particularly on routes affected by bad weather. It would make every effort to maintain as many services as possible over the coming week, subject to road and weather conditions.

It expected to provide more than 250,000 passenger journeys over the holiday period. Intending passengers were asked to visit transport.ie or buseireann.ie or contact their local travel centre for latest information on service changes.

The Garda has repeated advice to motorists not to travel unless strictly necessary and to keep to main roads where possible.

The National Roads Authority said there were sufficient salt supplies with about 8,000 tonnes in reserve nationally. It said it took about 2,000 tonnes to grit principal roads nightly and that a fresh shipment of salt would arrive in Cork tomorrow. It said some 25,000 tonnes would be available to service roads over Christmas.

Fine Gael transport spokesman Simon Coveney has asked the Oireachtas Committee on Transport to convene an emergency meeting to discuss the issue of salt for gritting the roads. He said the authority had a number of questions to answer on the management of salt supplies in the recent cold spells.