AIRPORT OPERATOR DAA has urged passengers flying through Dublin Airport over the Easter weekend not to arrive too early.

A shortage of security screening staff  has led to lengthy queues inside and outside the airport in recent weeks, causing some passengers to miss their flights. 

Over 500,000 people are set to travel in and out of Dublin Airport over the Easter break.

In a statement, the daa said that passengers should arrive at Dublin Airport up to three and a half hours before their flight.

“Daa is urging morning passengers due to fly from 08.30am onwards, not to arrive into the terminals before 05.00am,” the spokesperson said.

This will ease pressure on the security regime and allow passengers flying during the busy first morning wave (those with flights before 08.30 am) to progress through security and on to their boarding gates.

The spokesperson said that passengers do not need to arrive earlier than three and a half hours before their flight.

“Arriving earlier than needed has been found to increase pressure at busy times over recent days and weeks,” they said.

The airport said it had been trying to recover from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic “which effectively shut down the aviation industry for two years”, and blamed shortages in fully trained staff for the delays. 

“Dublin Airport is currently in the process of hiring almost 300 new security screening staff to help it meet the significant increase in demand for international travel.

“Good progress is being made in that recruitment process with more than 500 candidates, from a pool of more than 4,500 applications, having been invited for an interview over the past two weeks,” the spokesperson said.

While successful candidates are trained, Garda vetted and put through compulsory security checks over the coming period – a process which takes around 5-6 weeks – daa is working to ensure that it has the maximum number of security lanes open at all times in both terminals.

A taskforce, consisting of more than 600 daa office staff, is also being deployed in the terminals to provide additional support and customer service to passengers.

On Saturday, passengers had to queue outside Dublin Airport in the early hours of the morning to get into the terminals after heeding the advice to arrive hours in advance of their flights.

Footage and images shared by passengers online showed winding queues to get into the airport in the hours before 6am, before reaching further queues for check-in, bag drop and security.

A daa spokesperson said people queued outside the terminals for a maximum of 15-20 minutes in the early hours.

Airport workers had to “stagger the flow of passengers into the terminals” during that morning as people arrived several hours ahead of their flights, a statement from the daa said.