Ireland Braces For Tough Summer Travel

There are long waits at check-in and security at airlines, as well as canceled or delayed flights and luggage concerns. Summer travel is causing havoc in Europe this year due to flight cancellations. Ireland has not been immune to the continent’s travel woes, with long lineups at Dublin Airport garnering headlines and prompting the airport’s operator, Daa, to say it had “let the nation down.”

According to Mr. Corry, there will be delays and cancellations. There will be further disturbances that we haven’t experienced before. The summer figures indicate that it will be a difficult summer for everyone concerned, including the passengers.

“The essential thing at the root is everybody scaled-down [staffing] for Covid,” Mr. Corry says, with this including airports, airlines, and subcontractors responsible for the likes of feeding passengers and cleaning toilets.

“Everybody has scaled back up for post-Covid and aviation traffic passenger numbers ran at three or four percentage points higher than anyone anticipated. Some people are better able to deal with this. Some people weren’t,” he says.

Travelers are still experiencing security and check-in lineups, albeit not to the extent experienced at the end of May when more than 1,000 passengers missed flights owing to lines reaching beyond the airport’s terminal buildings.

The delays were verified on Sunday at check-in counters and bag drop areas owing to airline staffing problems, as the airport has its biggest weekend of the year, with 53,000 passengers departing on Monday alone.