DAA HAS CHANGED its advice for passengers using Dublin Airport, reducing the amount of time it advises people to arrive before their scheduled flight. 

Passengers are now advised to arrived two hours before a short-haul flight and three hours before a long-haul flight. This is a reduction of half an hour in each case compared to advice that was issued in April of this year. 

Passengers checking in a bag are however advised to allow additional time “of up to an hour”, with DAA saying that the changes have been made in consultation with airlines. 

Long wait-times to enter the Dublin Airport terminals and at security checks had led to passengers missing flights earlier this year but the operator says that these issues have been addressed. 

DAA says there have been “no significant security challenges in June, July or August” and that during these summer months “no passengers have missed flights” that heeded the advice. 

“During July – Dublin Airport’s busiest month in three years – over 3 million passengers flew in and out of the airport,” DAA CEO Dalton Philip said today.

99% of all passengers passed through security in under 45 minutes, while 90% of passengers queued for 30 minutes or less. In the first two weeks of August, virtually all passengers were through security screening in 30 minutes or less.

In June, a decision was taken to put the Defence Forces on standby to assist with security at the Dublin Airport but DAA said today that this requirement “ultimately did not materialise”. 

The Defence Forces have therefore been stood down from this plan with DAA also saying that it had bolstered its security staff and that an “ongoing recruitment drive” would bring staff back to 2019 levels. 

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Speaking at an Oireachtas Committee at the beginning of June, DAA chief Philips had admitted that the company was “wildly wrong” in its estimates of the post-Covid recovery of passenger numbers. 

Separately, Shannon Airport has said that since March of this year the airport has recruited a total of 19 Airport Screening Unit officers to add to its existing team.