Three nuns rush through the doors of Dublin Airport’s Terminal 1 shortly after 7am on Friday, the stress and anxiety visible on their faces as their habits billow in the breeze. Less than 10 minutes later two of the nuns emerge and head toward the car park looking considerably more relaxed.
“We were just dropping off Sister,” one says. “She is heading to London and we thought there would be terrible queues but she flew threw. We were actually hoping for a day out at the airport but we’re not going to get that now. It’s almost a miracle.”
Well, if anyone would know a miracle when they see one it’d be a nun.
The calm after last weekend’s storm means there is little sign of turbulence at the airport on Friday morning as the busiest weekend since pre-pandemic times gets under way.
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“You should have been here at three this morning,” a security guard tells The Irish Times as we wander up and down outside the terminal building looking in vain for angry people in danger of missing their flights.
“It was mental, there were loads of people going through the tents. But it’s grand now so it is.”
The tents the security guard was talking about are actually makeshift coverings outside the building, erected overnight and designed to offer shelter to anyone left standing in line. One “tent” was for people with bags to check-in, one was for the lighter packers with carry-on luggage only.
There wasn’t a sinner in either queue.
Inside the airport the story was much the same. The queue snaking through the security checkpoint was moving fast while the airport staff manning the entrance to the Fast Track queue had little or nothing to be doing.
It was clear even as far back as the roundabout at the entrance to the airport that there was unlikely to be any repeat of last weekend’s chaotic scenes which left thousands of people standing in line for hours, with over 1,000 of them missing flights as a result.
Apart from a cluster of men in high vis boiler suits enthusiastically alerting in-coming cars to the changes to the airport configuration to facilitate the new outdoor queueing system, it could have been any other Friday morning.
Stags and hens flowed through the doors as did families and couples, many of whom were looking forward to their first holiday since before Covid.
Kayla and Dana Murphy from Tallaght were standing outside the terminal building having a last cigarette before they boarded a flight bound for Benidorm.
“We were pretty nervous but on arrival it seems okay so we are a bit at ease now,” Kayla says. “The stress and the worry and the anxiety impacted the build-up and put a little bit of a dampener on thing but we’re here now.”
Asked what they were going to do for the four hours before their flight was due to depart, the two sisters answered in unison. “Drink some wine.”
Clare Houlihan from Kilkenny wasn’t planning to head straight for the bar once she had checked herself and her three children into a flight bound for Vancouver heading over to see her sister for the first time since 2018.
“I was expecting queues from when we got dropped off but thankfully it looks okay. So far so good anyway.”
Natalia Czersk arrived in the airport with her family including an infant baby. “We were stressed that we would miss the flight especially travelling with the baby, with the queues and stuff and if it was raining so it was stressful. I just realised a minute ago there be no problem.”
Richard McCamley was off to Benidorm for his soon-to-be son-in-law’s stag.
“I was bit concerned last week when I saw the mess but I wasn’t nervous because they had a week to sort it out and as the week went on I felt a bit more reassured. We’ll fly through security and then up to the bar.”
McCamley’s stag was followed by 48 women heading to Benidorm for a hen.
“I was very anxious, we couldn’t sleep because of the airport. We were watching all the news. I just want to get her on that flight,” the mother of the bride Anne Dylan from Blackhorse Avenue says.
Will and Natasha Fox are off to Barcelona with their three young children.
“I thought we bounced luck because it was so bad last weekend that by the time this came round we’d sail through,” Will says. “There be time for Butlers before we get on the plane. Mind you I hope we are not going to miss the flight because we are talking to you.”
Shay and Pauline Ahern from Castleknock were heading off on their very first sun holiday in more than two years and were “very nervous” in the build-up.
“We didn’t know what to expect,” Shay says. “This is not what we expected, there is no one here.”
The DAA’s head of communications Kevin Cullinane is on hand watching the morning unfold and is cautiously optimistic his day won’t turn into another nightmare. He accepts that people have been “a little bit spooked after last Sunday’s events” and again apologises for that.
“It’s been extremely busy as you would expect for the first day of June bank holiday weekend,” he says. “But so far today, passengers have been getting through our security lanes in under 45 minutes with the majority in less that 30 minutes and by six o’clock this morning, passengers were getting through and under 10 minutes. So that gives us confidence going into Saturday, Sunday and beyond.”
