TRAVEL: New passenger gates opened

DUBLIN Airport has opened a new €22 million boarding gate area, just in time for the Christmas holiday rush.

The new South Gates area, which will be used mainly by Aer Lingus for flights to the UK and continental Europe, has five boarding gates serving nine aircraft parking stands.

Passengers will walk out to the aircraft, allowing airlines a fast turnaround time for their operation.

A shuttle bus service from an existing lounge at Gate 335 will operate every two minutes on a continuous loop bringing passengers to and from the new boarding gate facility.

“The huge growth that we have had in passenger numbers in recent years created significant demand for extra boarding gate space and aircraft parking stands and this new facility meets those requirements in a modern flexible way,” said Dublin Airport Managing Director Vincent Harrison.

“We have worked closely with our airline customers to deliver a quality new facility in a rapid timeframe.”

The South Gates boarding area is part of a €100 million plus investment programme at Dublin Airport this year, as improvements are made to existing passenger and airfield areas and new facilities are delivered.

Other major investments include the total resurfacing of the main runway, an extension to the 100 boarding gate area, an upgrade to the 200 gates, and the refurbishment of Terminal 1’s departures and arrivals areas.

Work on the new boarding gate area, which is located south of Terminal 2, started earlier this year.

The 2,200 sq mt facility was built offsite in 80 pieces and then transported to Dublin Airport for final assembly.

The gates have been designed to be used to accommodate departing flights in the busy early morning period and arriving flights in the evening.

The new facility can also be segregated so that departing and arriving passengers can be processed at the same time.

The new building can accommodate almost 1,000 passengers and includes a café, toilets, baby changing facilities and a workstation area with plugs and charging points.

Meanwhile, the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) is predicting it will have safely and efficiently managed over 1.15 million flights in 2017, most of them from Dublin Airport.

Peter Kearney, Chief Executive Designate of the IAA said: “Air traffic has expanded again this year on top of the eight per cent expansion last year, driven by very strong lifts at both Dublin Airport and through Irish airspace on flights between Europe and North America.

 “Dublin airport handles about 85 per cent of all flights in and out of Ireland and we are projecting an increase of about four per cent for the full year 2017 to around 215,000 commercial movements.

“We’ve started work on the construction of a new visual control tower at Dublin Airport so that the IAA is ready to support the ATC operational requirements for the new parallel runway in the years ahead.”