PASSENGERS:THOUSANDS OF frustrated passengers were left stranded at Dublin airport yesterday after the volcanic dust cloud severely disrupted European air traffic, resulting in the cancellation of all flights in and out of the airport.
More than 450 flights had been scheduled to arrive and depart at the airport, but only a fraction ever made it into the air after the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) took the decision to close the airport to all flights at noon.
Long before midday, however, it was apparent that only a few aircraft were landing or taking-off because of airport closures and flight cancellations in the UK and elsewhere.
Ryanair had cancelled all its flights in and out of Dublin by 10am, and Aer Lingus followed suit a short time afterwards.
By early morning long queues of disgruntled passengers had formed at the Aer Lingus and Ryanair ticket desks as people attempted to salvage their travel plans.
Gill Buckley from Loughlinstown, Co Dublin, who was queuing to rebook tickets to London while her 90-year-old mother waited in a cafe upstairs, reflected the mood.
“It’s frustrating but there is no one to blame . . . It’s just one of those things. I don’t know what we’ll do if we can’t get something tomorrow; maybe we’ll try the ferries, but I hear they’re booking up fast too.”
Leondra Coester from Colorado, US, whose Aer Lingus flight to Chicago had just been cancelled, complained that the authorities could have informed people earlier of the situation.
“I was watching the TV before I left, and the UK airports closed hours ago, but they didn’t say anything about Ireland, and I thought it was just a UK issue, so I came to the airport and now I’m stranded with nowhere to go.”
DAA spokeswoman Siobhan Moore said the airport was dealing with an “unprecedented event”.
“Airports are designed for people to come and go, and not to come and stay, so situations like this cause a major capacity problem for us,” she admitted.
“All we can do is to try and keep an orderly element to the queuing around the check-in and ticket desks.”
On the whole people had been “pretty good-natured” about the situation. “I think there is an understanding that this was a safety issue affecting traffic across Europe, and that it was not unique to Ireland.”
Both Aer Lingus and Ryanair offered passengers affected by the disruption the option to rebook flights in the coming days free of charge or to a full monetary refund via their websites.
The knock-on of the huge number of cancellations meant most flights today and tomorrow, especially on the busier routes, were booked out within hours, leaving many travel plans in disarray.
Paul Keeshan and Barbara Caballero, who travelled from Limerick yesterday morning with their young child to get a flight to Madrid, queued for an hour at the Ryanair ticket desk only to be told there were no available flights until tomorrow at the very least.
“Our holiday plans are ruined. We’ll probably have to cancel everything and just go home,” Mr Keeshan said.
Students Eirne Connolly, Lisa McCartney and Samantha Sheehan were facing a similar dilemma, having travelled from Cork to catch a flight to Valencia in Spain to start a 15-week trip as part of their college course.
The next available flight was on Sunday, but they were checking to see if they could return to Cork and fly to Alicante from there sooner.
