More than 20,000 Aer Lingus passengers planning to travel today have had to cancel, reschedule or try to book with other airlines because of the strike action by cabin crew.
Other carriers to and from airports in the State will be operating as usual but none has laid on extra aircraft. Although some Aer Lingus passengers have been accommodated on the other airlines, most have had to rearrange their journeys for another day.
An Aer Lingus spokesman said yesterday that when the decision was taken to cancel all flights, media advertisements were taken out and three task force teams in formed travel agents, the corporate sector and Gold Circle customers throughout its system in Ire land, Britain, Europe and the US. Its website had also been updated.
He said the airline would rebook passengers to flights on another day, facilitate bookings if possible through other airlines with which it had an agreement and if a passenger wanted to cancel then he or she would be told how to go about obtaining a refund. "It will hit our business traffic badly, there's no doubt about that," the spokesman said.
There were 20,000 journeys on an average day out of the three main airports, Dublin, Cork and Shannon. Inevitably, some passengers in Ireland or Paris or New York would turn up at the airport today. "All we can do in that case is apologise and try and get them seats on other airlines but there will undoubtedly be disappointed customers," he said.
For the following days of this week, routes were fairly busy. "For Wednesday and the next few days, we'll see how we can maximise our own resources and we might be able to put on some extra-capacity aircraft but it would be very limited," he said.
Aer Lingus has introduced a helpline at Freefone 1800-40-4000 from 7.30 a.m. to 11.30 p.m. daily.
British Airways is trying to put on larger-capacity aircraft on its London-Belfast routes today, and the one Sabena Dublin-Brussels return flight is also bigger. BA flights which have a code-sharing agreement with Aer Lingus will not be operating, although a few flights operated by BA aircraft will be flying. Passengers should contact the helpline to check. Other code-sharing airlines such as Finnair will operate as normal.
A Ryanair spokesman said yesterday the airline would operate normally on all its routes. "While we expect to carry extra passengers, we will not be adding any flights as all our aircraft are already committed to flying on our scheduled flights throughout Europe," he said.
More passengers than normal were expected but Ryanair would not be operating any larger-capacity aircraft. It was assumed it would pick up some bookings from Aer Lingus but it was not fully booked. Ryanair will be operating 50 return flights on its routes to and from Britain and to and from Europe today.
British Midlands is fully booked on its eight return Dublin-Heathrow flights and three return Dublin-East Midlands route which will be operating as normal. It is not operating any extra flights. A spokesman said passengers should ensure sufficient time for check-in.
Also fully booked are all City Jet flights on the four return Dublin-Paris flights and three return Dublin-London City routes, carrying 1,200 passengers. A spokesman said it was operating as usual with no extra flights.
Yesterday, passengers were delayed for an average of two hours because of a SIPTU baggage-handlers' stoppage between 6.30 a.m. and 8.30 a.m. During that time, all flights were grounded.