Dublin Airport Authority is celebrating Pride Month. The front of the airport is decorated with Pride flags and rainbow balloons to the extent it feels a bit like you have just walked down the mouth of a kaleidoscope. It is a pity they do not have more pride in their customer experience and celebrate that.
Dublin Airport is usually a pretty poor experience for the traveller. This time – this morning – travelling with my wife and 1- month-old baby, was particularly sub-standard. I am used to travelling in and out of Dublin Airport and have learned to bear it out of necessity. With Eamon Ryan retiring from politics, Dublin Airport must be considered one of his greatest successes. The passenger experience is a growing deterrent to air travellers and if it continues as it is, the 32 million passenger cap may not need to be revised upwards.
My most common complaint is arriving in the late evening on a flight that disembarks its passengers onto a bus, transports you to what I can only describe as a phantom terminal. You alight the bus, walk into what appears to be a terminal building (I recently discovered it is called ‘The South Gates, although it is more like the South Pen), only to be directed through its one hundred metres to the other end, to wait for another bus, which eventually takes you to the farthest end of the real terminal where you then walk the full length of the airport before transitioning through arrivals.
Admittedly, these flights are usually with Ryanair, who probably don’t want to pay Dublin Airport Authority the fees to bring their valued passengers any closer than absolutely necessary. With Ryanair, at least you have a good idea what you are going to get – no frills – and pay accordingly.
But at least they are organised. The Ryanair business model needs to be efficient and effective. T With Aer Lingus and DAA, I am not sure if it is necessarily true. Terminal 1 experiences multiples of the footfall that goes through Terminal 2 yet things run much more smoothly. Why this is so, I do not know.
Before getting to the airport, we were instructed – surprisingly – upon online check-in that our flight was departing from Terminal 1 – the ‘Ryanair terminal’. We parked in the Blue Car Park two and a half hours before departure, and waited a bit more than the fifteen minutes interval we were told buses arrive. A big crowd had gathered and the bus was jam-packed.
Off we went to Terminal 1, passing Terminal 2 on the way. Upon entering Terminal 1 the signs advised us to go to Terminal 2 to check in. An 800 metre walk back from where we came. Bag drop was chaotic. The foyer was packed, with almost no floor staff to assist or to direct. Queues to get a ticket for our bag overlapped with queues to the drop-bag counters. Everyone was frazzled, me included, as boarding time approached. People were queue-jumping in desperation.
One queue was directed to a bag-drop zone with a single operating kiosk. Beside it, a second queue had four operational kiosks. One moved substantially faster than the other. The place was so busy the laggard queuers only discovered the cause of their plight once it was too late to try the other line. Frustrations increasing. One of the groundstaff had to tell passengers to take a photo of their bag receipt because the label printer wasn’t working.
I was visibly annoyed and forthrightly directed a young queue-jumper to join in the correct location. She forthrightly refused with even more colourful language.
Security clearance was not bad. In all fairness, there is new equipment that means you don’t have to unpack all your toiletries and electrical equipment which kept everything moving at a reasonable pace. Although my empty water bottled magically disappeared as it was transported through the machine forcing me to test my honesty at the unmanned two euro water bottle stand.
But once through security, we were directed by another screen that our flight was actually departing from one of the ‘300’ Gates (which to a seasoned traveller is known to be in Terminal 1 – the Ryanair Terminal) so back again we went, another 800m with baby and buggy in tow.
It isn’t the first time this has happened to me in Dublin Airport. To an infrequent Dublin Airport visitor, it feels like just another long walk in airport. There is nothing that obviously informs you that you are walking to another terminal – or one that you had only one hour prior been told you had to get out of.
My water bottle which I hastily emptied down my throat before security so that I wouldn’t have to discard it disappeared going through the x-ray scanners. Vaporised. So I had to test my conscience when deciding whether to put an inflationary 2 euro in the honesty box at the stack of nicely packaged ‘paper’ water bottles. Whether I did or not, I let you surmise. It felt like DAA owed me a bottle…
The ‘300 Gates’ sit in what is a sort if mini-terminal of about 10 gates. Seating is fairly minimal and always crowded. Once we reached the gate, the wife was tired, I was warm, and the baby was hungry. There were no seats free. I spied a couple with carry on bags placed to reserve them as their owners, I guessed, had gone to get some refreshments or do some toileteering.
I asked the woman sitting next to them if she knew whose they were and she proceeded to remove one so that I could sit down. I called the wife over to let her sit and feed the baby, and the lady then removed the second bag. It isn’t unusual in modern society to selfishly occupy an additional seat with bags to avoid having a stranger sit next to you. To occupy two is just plain rude.
Airports are the first and last place a visitor experiences a country. First impressions last, and last impressions can colour what may have been a wonderful (albeit costly) experience, holidaying in Ireland. While the DAA may wish to celebrate Pride Month, the colourful façade does little to wallpaper over the cracks in its customer experience.
David Reynolds