Stories from the ground, beneath the ash...
MATTHIAS MENNEKESfrom Frankfurt travelled from Waterford to Dublin airport yesterday morning to catch a flight home for the weekend, only to find it had been cancelled.
Mr Mennekes and his colleagues Joanna Kostecka from Poznan in Poland and Odetta Zemankova from Bratislava are working on an audit project for the next few weeks – for a company that makes fan blades for aircraft engines.
He seemed relatively unperturbed by a delay of at least 36 hours, which all going well will see him get home to Frankfurt today only for him to return to Dublin, and then Waterford, on Monday morning.
Mr Mennekes said he had no trouble getting an accommodation voucher from Lufthansa.
“It took them five minutes, so it was a really nice experience.” He had never before been to Dublin city centre and thought he might pay a visit last night, perhaps inevitably, “for the Guinness”.
SONIA ÁLVAREZ, a teacher leading a group of 19 young school students from Galicia in Spain, expected they would have to stay in Ireland for another two or three days. They were originally scheduled to return home via Madrid on Thursday. They stayed in a hotel in the "middle of nowhere" on Thursday, but hoped to get accommodation in Dublin last night. They would, however, have to pay for the extra few days' accommodation themselves.
They had already visited Galway and the Cliffs of Moher and two days in Dublin to see Trinity College and the National Gallery.
“I guess our flight is going this Sunday, but the problem is there are not places for all of us. Our trip was very pleasant but now it’s a problem.
“Yesterday it was funny, one day, but they [the students] have no money. They spent all the money for presents and gifts.”
A 32-WOMAN hen partygroup from Dublin wearing pink cowgirl hats were very disappointed to find their 2.45pm flight to Benidorm cancelled. They included bride-to-be Paula McNab, her mother Frances and friends Joanne Ward, Fiona Downey and Annemarie Kearney. Downstairs in the bar on the arrivals floor, Paula was upset and on the phone to her fiance. Frances had spent hours queuing to try to get alternative flights and, for a while, the women believed they had secured enough seats on a flight to Palma, Mallorca, today.
Later, however, Frances phoned The Irish Times from a bus en route to Dublin city centre. From there, they planned to travel to Kilkenny for the weekend.
UP TO 180 passengerswere stranded in Madrid for a second night after their Ryanair flight was diverted from Lanzarote to Madrid on Wednesday.
Eilis Boland, who had been holidaying in Lanzarote with her two sisters, said yesterday that the the flight should not have been allowed take off when there was a fair chance that Dublin airport would remain closed.
“We went to the airport and the minute we arrived, word was coming through from home that Dublin airport was closed and that Cork might close but the flight did take off. Three or four hours later, the pilot came on and said we’d been diverted and were going to Madrid,” she said.
The passengers were taken to a hotel by airport officials, where they will be put up again tonight. However, Ms Boland says they still haven’t heard any word on when they can expect to get home.
“We’re neither here nor there. We’re working on the basis that they’re going to send a plane to take us home but we don’t know.”
A Ryanair spokeswoman said the passengers would be put up by Ryanair until such time as the aircraft on which they were flying was able to fly to Dublin airport which, she expected, would happen on Monday.