Is Dublin airport back to normal yet ?

I face an 0630 takeoff later this week, and if recent stories are to be believed, I should be at the airport at 0430 in order to make it through security in time - well to make it through the queue in time. This seems a bit mad to say the least.

I know it is early and probably before the normal morning peak around 0730, but I would hate to find out that you still need to be there 2h early.

Anyone flown out at the hour recently ?

Cheers,

z

Yes,it's still very busy! I was a the airport on Wednesday morning around 5.30am for a flight at 7.30. I've never seen it so busy. I used the fastpass check-in and only had hand luggage. It took me about 40 minutes to get to the security check at that time. The queue was crazy. I would say you are better to be early as they were really slow. I was glad I hadn't bags to check in or it would have taken me even longer. You even have to take off you shoes now so they can x-ray them!

Enaja said:

I've never seen it so busy. I used the fastpass check-in and only had hand luggage.

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Can you use the fastpass machine if you have bags to check in?

Can you use the fastpass machine if you have bags to check in?

Yes.

Rainyday - yes you can. You use it as normal and somewhere along the way it asks you if you have any bags. Once you have got your boarding card from the machine you go to a generic check-in desk nearby and give them your bags like the old way. It is still faster because there are a number of shared generic check-in desks servicing all the fastpass people.

This whole fastpass thing would certainly influence my choice of airlines - EI to London because they have fastpass in Dublin and BMI back because *they* have fastpass in Heathrow and EI don't.

z

The last time I used Fastpass in Dublin Airport they lost my bag on the way to Heathrow and then insisted that I checked in too late despite the fact that I checked in 2 hours before the flight and my boyfriends bag made it to Heathrow no problem.

Got the bag a few hours later.

zag said:

This whole fastpass thing would certainly influence my choice of airlines - EI to London because they have fastpass in Dublin and BMI back because *they* have fastpass in Heathrow and EI don't.

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EI now have FastPass in Heathrow.

Is it as bad at the weekends ?

9.45 am Saturday flight to Malaga ?

Cheers

Update - before 0500 it took exactly 1 minute to checkin at the fastpass machine, but there was a huge queue for the baggage checkin. Luckily I didn't have any baggage, so about 3 minutes after getting to the airport I was in the security queue. About 15 minutes later I was through the far side with my shoes, laptop and carry-on bag in my hands trying to put everything back together.

There were signs up indicating that they were training more staff and asking everyone to bear with them. The bad news is that at that hour all the scanners were in use, so it probably doesn't matter how many staff they have it will just take longer and longer to get through as the day continues.

There are 2 sets of queues you can join - one up at the Aer Lingus end of the hall and one down the other end. When I was passing the (inside of) the other end there appeared to be almost no queue, so it may pay to check both queues before blindly joining the nearest queue if you are in a rush.

z

zag said:

, but there was a huge queue for the baggage checkin.

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Just to be clear, was the huge queue at the normal check-in desks, or the desk for those who had already used the fastpass machine but still had bags to be taken in?

rainyday - the latter. The queue was for people who had used fastpass and had luggage to check in.

I didn't notice any significant queue for 'old' style check-in - possibly due to the fact that most people were using fastpass in the first place.

z

Things definately have calmed down!

I was in for a 9:00 flight yesterday - so I was aiming for being there 90 minutes before take-off (i.e. 7:30am)

I got to the airport @ 7:15am, used BMI's little self-checkin machines (dead handy!).. and wondered over to the departures gate on the Aerlingus side...

I was in total disbelief to see NOT ONE PERSON in the queue! Went straight to the guy at the door, flashed my boarding card, walked straight up to scanning machines, took laptop out of bag, took shoes off, dumped everything onto belt, and walked through the security machine. I was actually in and out of security in under 2 minutes!

I have NEVER EVER been through security that fast, even before all this hoola-ba-loo with long queues, etc.

-soc