Long queues through security were replaced on Monday morning by lengthy waits to drop off baggage as Dublin Airport’s woes continued.
At one stage, the queue for the baggage drop at Terminal 2 for Aer Lingus stretched the length of the building.
John Peck, who was flying to Washington DC, said he had spent 40 minutes waiting and had only reached the halfway point in the process of dropping off his bag.
“I live in Pittsburgh. We go to Pittsburgh to Boston and on to Dublin and I have never seen a line like this,” he said. “The people who tried to check in online didn’t have to go through this. I tried to do it last night and it didn’t work.”
There were also long lines for baggage check in at Terminal 1, including for Ryanair flights, though the problem was not as acute as in Terminal 2.
Queues through security were in the order of 30 minutes for most of the morning, but one passenger who had arrived at 3.20am said the baggage queues were already lengthy by that stage.
There were many people at the airport on Monday morning who had been stranded as a result of Sunday’s debacle when at least 1,000 passengers missed flights as a result of delays.
One woman, who declined to give her name, was supposed to fly out on Sunday morning to Naples, Italy, but got caught up in the security queues. She will not fly out until Tuesday night instead. She has been in the airport since Sunday in the hope that she could get a seat on standby.
“The flights were all booked out. This is disgraceful. I haven’t slept for 27 hours. I’m probably not the best person to ask about what went on yesterday,” she said.
Padraig Lawlor, who lives in Donegal, said he missed his flight to Budapest on Sunday and feared that he would not get on the flight on Monday, such were the queues for the baggage drop.
“It isn’t just the airport. The airlines haven’t got enough people and then everybody goes at the same time,” he said. “It’s concerning that the airport doesn’t seem to know how to fix it. If they don’t know, they should know.”
Two German women were left stranded in Dublin when their Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt was cancelled. Melanie Schwab and Julianna Muller said they had received no information about why their flight was cancelled and had to spend a night in a hotel.
“There was nobody at the gate to tell us what happened and no information. We have little children at home. Now we can’t get home until tomorrow. We are trying to get any flight home today,” she said.
Two Dutch passengers told The Irish Times that the situation in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport on their way to Ireland was as bad as that facing them in Dublin.
