The Army is due to leave Dublin Airport later this month after being put on standby to deal with any further queue problems which had led to more than 1,000 passengers missing flights in May.
The army had been put in place following an intervention on 06 July by Minister for Transport, Eamon Ryan.
However, DAA’s head of communications, Kevin Cullinane said there has been no need to call on the Defence Forces for help since it was put on standby.
Speaking to The Irish Times yesterday, Mr Cullinane said: “We can confirm that the agreement in place with the Department of Defence is due to expire on August 15th and at the time of responding DAA has not requested any extension. While the Defence Forces are trained for vehicle checkpoint duty and have been on standby since July 6th, DAA has not had reason to call on their services.”
Mr Cullinane said DAA is making ‘good progress’ in cutting the amount of time passengers take to negotiate security screening at Dublin Airport. He said 99 per cent of passengers got through security in under 30 minutes in the last week of July and 100 per cent did so in 45 minutes. He linked this to ‘phenomenal efforts’ by staff and the ‘ongoing recruitment of new airport security officers’.
Dublin Airport is continuing to advise passengers to arrive two and a half hours in advance for a short-haul flight, three and a half hours for a long-haul flight and to add an additional hour if checking in a bag. “This passenger advice remains under constant review and DAA looks forward to reducing the advised arrival times when the time is right,” Mr Cullinane said.
