Some move to ‘arrivals’ to sleep, others huddle under the escalator to plan their way out
IT WAS a tale of two worlds in Dublin airport as the joy of the arrivals terminal seemed so distant to the chaos of the departures hall above.
On the one hand, “arrivals” was populated mostly by just a few relieved, reunited families, ecstatic that they at least had found a way to be together this Christmas. Only a few feet above, a chaotic departures hall was swamped with passengers who still awaited their passage home.
There were signs below of the madness, however. Juris Berezniks and his friends, Andis and Gatis, had escaped downstairs for the night to get some sleep before trying again for a way home to Latvia.
Like so many others, their flight had been cancelled because of the weather, leaving them unsure as to whether they would be able to travel.
The scene they had left behind remained largely unchanged from the night before. There, Arjan Bensehop sat with his girlfriend Sarika Chanbrangam under an escalator while they planned their next move.
They were supposed to fly home to Eindhoven on Monday. They even sat on the plane for three hours that night until being told it was cancelled and they would have to return to the departures hall.
“It was crazy – totally full when we came back in. We queued for another three hours and rebooked a flight for Tuesday morning. We were one of the lucky ones because people who tried after 10pm were told to go away and try again in the morning,” says Bensehop. After a night in a Dublin hotel, their luck soon ran out as snow fell once more.
“We knew when travelling to the airport that our flight probably wasn’t going to go,” says Chanbrangam.
“We just wanted to get to the mainland [of Europe]. We figured we could get trains or something from there so we booked on to a flight to Malaga . At least the weather would be warm there,” she says.
They were far from alone that night as they slept in the airport where many wanted to ensure a good spot in line on Wednesday morning. They need not have worried because for a second time their flights were cancelled but only after queuing for a further two hours.
As they sat in their mini getaway under the escalator, they discussed their options. A flight to Stansted that evening which, even if it managed to depart, would force them to spend another night on the floors before hopefully flying to Eindhoven today.
Alternatively they could make their way to Dublin Port where they could board a ferry to Holyhead, which was a step closer to the Netherlands, if nothing else.
Tom Ditchburn from Cheshire in England was en route to Boston from Manchester on Tuesday morning. He planned to spend Christmas with his girlfriend and her family there. “We circled around Dublin for a bit because of the snow and then really quickly it seemed to shut down and we had to be diverted to Cork.”
Along with his fellow passengers he was then bussed up to Dublin, a journey which took six hours through the snow.
Wisely, while on the road he texted his mother who booked him on to another flight from Dublin. This saved him a queue which, he says, had taken one girl four hours just to get halfway up.
It didn’t matter as the weather grounded his rebooked flight anyway which left him sleeping on the floor with many others. It has been the lack of help from Aer Lingus that he most resents.
“A couple of food vouchers would be really handy. Aer Lingus told my mum on the phone that they would get us some and give us a room but when I asked a guy here he just said there were too many people and it wasn’t happening,” says Ditchburn.