About 40,000 people have disrupted their travel plans this month as 240 flights departing for Dublin were cancelled.
Travel chaos continues across the continent this summer, hundreds of flights have appeared that have to depart Dublin Airport have been canceled by airlines in the past four weeks.
The cancellations were made by several airlines and were unrelated to any security delays at Dublin Airport.
According to Dublin Airport’s Live Departures, two flights scheduled to depart from the airport this weekend have been cancelled, to Düsseldorf and Chisinau.
Ryanairwhen asked how many flights from Dublin it has had to cancel in recent months, it gave no figures, but said it now operates a “full schedule” of 3,000 daily flights across the continent.
This was, Ryanair said, “unlike many other airlines who have not adequately planned the return of the journey after Covid”.
Ryanair said it has faced “very minimal disruption” in recent months and that this was not under their control, but rather due to air traffic control and the shortage of airport staff across Europe.
Aer Lingus has not responded to requests for information about the number of flights it has canceled from Dublin Airport.
An Oireachtas Transport Committee heard this week that more than 4,200 passengers have yet to be reunited with their lost luggage currently trapped at Dublin Airport.
Aer Lingus and Sky Handling Partners (SHP), who are responsible for the majority of lost baggage at the airport, are working to return baggage to passengers, but receive approximately 800 new lost baggage on the ground in Dublin every day between them into .
SHP director Darren Moloney admitted to the committee that the company’s standards “just haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels”.
Gerard Kenny of SHP said that one of the reasons the number of lost luggage is so high is the staffing problems at European airports and airlines, causing some flights to arrive with “no luggage loaded… at all”.
“Some airlines even choose daily which flights they will not load, because they also do not have the resources. Luckily we haven’t had that from Dublin as far as I know, certainly not from ourselves.
“But it means it’s like trying to climb a sand dune in Dublin right now – once we start making some progress with luggage, another plane could potentially miss 60 bags or miss all of its bags.”
The committee also heard that “hundreds of thousands” of euros have been paid so far to people who missed flights at the start of the summer due to delays at Dublin Airport.
In May, long queues at security checkpoints due to unusually high absenteeism caused 1,400 people to miss their flights, sparking criticism from ministers, politicians and citizens.
Dublin Airport compensates those who have not made any money as a result. TDs and senators were told that more than 75 percent of claims “either have been settled or are at an advanced stage of processing.”