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Dublin Live
Dublin Live
National
Marita Moloney & Mark O'Brien

Dublin Airport responds to footage showing 3am queue chaos

Dublin Airport is to temporarily reassign staff from Cork Airport following further "chaotic" scenes this morning.

Passengers were greeted by more crazy queues from 3am this morning with some waiting over two hours to get through security.

Some 300 people have already issued formal complaints to the Dublin Airport Authority over delays and missed flights, reports the Irish Mirror.

Read more: Dublin Airport footage shows massive 3am queues resulting in passenger chaos

One traveller wrote at 4am: "Dublin Airport is worse than you can actually imagine. Waited 1 hour for desk to open, 40 minute to drop bags but team great.

"Now in impossible snake queue through hall. Pink viz doing best but too many people. 2hours & 10 minutes with bag drop desk wait"

Travellers have been advised to arrive at the airport three and a half hours in advance to ensure they don't miss their flights.

The recommendation comes ahead of the busy Easter period when millions of people will transit through Ireland's biggest airport.

Passengers reported "crazy" queues, with one describing the scenes as "carnage" and like "a cattle mart".

A spokesperson for daa said the "significant queues" in both Terminals at Dublin Airport in the early hours of Friday morning were particularly bad between 2.30am and 4.30am.

Graeme McQueen, Media Relations Manager at daa, said this was mainly the result of "a large number of passengers arriving earlier than expected ahead of flights later in the morning".

At its peak, it took some passengers up to 70 minutes to pass through security but "queue times reduced considerably once additional security lanes were opened up, as scheduled, in both terminals", he added.

Dublin Airport is warning people travelling over Easter to arrive at the airport "a minimum of three and a half hours prior to their departure time".

"As the number of passengers travelling through Dublin Airport continues to increase over the coming period, daa continues to refine and adapt its security screening operation with the aim of ensuring that we get all passengers through security in plenty of time to make their flight," Mr McQueen said.

"We thank passengers for continuing to work with us at this time, which is seeing passenger numbers grow and Dublin Airport, like all other airports across Europe and UK, continuing to build back following the collapse of international travel over the past two years due to Covid-19.

"As always, Dublin Airport's customer service team will work closely with any passengers who are found to have missed a flight as a result of delays at security screening to determine whether they are due a refund."

Mr McQueen said the measures to mitigate the delays include "the recruitment, training, and security clearance of a significant number of additional security screening staff to help Dublin Airport cope with the significantly higher than expected passenger numbers set to fly over the coming weeks and months".

"The shortage of security screening staff is the key contributory factor to the current difficulties," he said.

"While there have been no constraints on recruitment – more than 100 new security staff have already been recruited to date this year - daa is re-doubling its efforts to recruit additional staff. This week daa invited around 250 candidates for an interview, with offers now being made to almost 100 of those candidates.

"daa is also exploring other options to increase security staff numbers, including identifying former security screeners still employed by daa but now in different roles in the company and reaching out to those currently on career breaks, to ascertain their interest in reverting to security duties in the short term.

"The company is temporarily re-assigning a number of Cork-based security staff to Dublin in a manner that will assist the operation at Dublin Airport, without compromising the product offering in Cork. daa is also offering overtime to screening staff to encourage them to take up additional hours to help alleviate the issue.

"Bringing some recruits into the operation has been delayed by the requirement for enhanced background checks for aviation workers which came into effect on January 1 this year. Thankfully, however, this log jam is now easing."

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