Dublin Airport New Runway/Infrastructure.

He was making a point about noise

It's going to be very funny when the cap is scrapped and the NIMBYs go mental.

This. I've come to this thread a few times over the last week seeing loads of new posts, expecting to find some new interesting posts about the airport and instead its just one very obviously trolling poster getting dozens of replies.

If the poster was arguing in good faith they'd have read the replies to the exact same argument thats happened multiple times in this thread already, and would be making new or relevant points. But they're not.

Its the organization and communications I have an issue with.

We all accept that things happen and you can't just open more CBP gates but the lack of any planning by the DAA for eventualities like this is concerning.

No announcements, no proper q'ing system. Staff are doing their best walking the line and calling out flights but it looks like off the cuff management, not a coordinated plan.

I am a big believer in removing the cap but today's events make me wonder if the DAA can handle the extra numbers.

No sense, how so?

If the DAA can't organize for something like this, how will they cope with 40m passengers in the same amount of space and with the same infrastructure (their infrastructure plans won't come on stream for many years).

Maybe they have a plan and if so great but the evidence of today does not isntill confidence.

Organising things to cope with a long-term increase in numbers is one thing. Doing an emergency piece of organisation to cope with a power cut is an entirely different matter. Almost no relation whatever.

"The nature of the outage caused an issue with the airport's back-up generator"

It's amazing how easily PR departments can spin a few words.

In plain English, main power went out, back-up didn't kick in due to lack of maintenance and/or testing.

I once worked for a major broadband provider where the lights and computers in the office went out one afternoon, then there was an enormous *BANG* 💥 Turns out the diesel generator exploded as soon as the electrical load was dumped on it.

Anyway, back on topic, will the Metro power infrastructure plan feed into the airport too or are they likely to be kept independent?

I believe we may have worked for the same one!

As I recall the batteries driving the servers lasted about 30 minutes, and about a minute after they gave out the mains came back 😀

When was the last large scale power outage at Dublin airport?

Staff numbers would be planned to cover the days scheduled operations so producing staff in big numbers would be difficult especially in a situation where the situation is difficult to assess i.e. it could take hours or it could be sorted in less than that.

First thing they have to do after this is ensure the emergency generators are available if there is a major outage.

Apologies, got you mixed up with another poster but calling people morons is not a winning strategy imho.

As I recall, Dublin's generators are in a large facility beside the church. I suspect the UPS (uninterupted power supply, i.e batteries) which are designed to hold up the servers etc for a few seconds until the generators kick in were the problem.

This…

A lot of "experts" going straight to the generator being the issue….

A generator takes time to spin up to load taking capacity (30 seconds to 1 min) …

You have a battery bank to take on immediate business critical systems and circuits…

Then the generator takes over…

So you usually have a failure of certain light systems etc… but PC's etc… stay on, then the lights come back on..

If it was a straight out power cut, there is an issue with the UPS systems or UPS switchgear (of which there should be an A and a B system, meaning Dublin either only have one, or both failed (I don't know which is the more disturbing scenario)).

I thought this was a discussion forum so opinions were allowed?

I feel we should expect higher standards from our major airport operator. Certainly the soundings from the people around me, mostly American, was they could not believe how disorganized it was.

Issues with crowds, whether due to a power outage, system outage or busy days, are not unexpected in an airport and a crowd control plan should have been ready to be deployed

If it was deployed it was not fit for purpose. Staff did their best but the whole thing gave a very poor picture of the country.

I'll leave it there.

I think as the lights stayed out or at least from what I read on various reports the generators failed to start, I wonder was there a sync issue with the generators. Agreed the UPS should be A+B supply to the critical IT services but I wonder how long they can last without mains or generator power? are they purely to allow for the generators to start up and take the load as in a few minutes or depending on their capacity 30mins plus. These systems are very complicated and I wonder do the DAA do any black starts to test the UPS/Generators?

Regardless I'm sure there will be an internal enquiry in the DAA's engineering team for sure…

Generators are generally tested at least fortnightly in in ATC facilities in Europe.

If the UPS failed to perform, then the IT sytems for security, check in, US CBP etc would have gone through an unplanned hard reset. Each would have come back in different stages in different phases etc. These systems need to interact with their counterparts throughout the world. It is entirely possible that firewalls elsewhere "locked out" the systems in Dublin and each needed to be manually interacted with themselve to re-introduce the Dublin systems.

That's where my money is right now.

Not sure how they manage fine with only 35 flights between 23.00 and 7.00 looking at tonight from 23.00 to 7.00 tomorrow 52 arrivals and 47 departures, what am I missing?

It certainly looks that way and that then contradicts the draft grant of permission and other conditions.

We really do an excellent job of making things more difficult than they need to be in this country!

European Commission Legislation supercedes National Legislation. In the same way ICAO is an arm of the UN, EASA is an arm of the European Commission. Some of the "complaints" from the NIMBYs and cranks are that the SIDS (Standard Instrument Departures) on the North Runway are in breach of planning laws/planning permission. They're not and even if they were they are in compliance with EASA.

Why does a local authority, have the right to decide aviation policy? The cap needs to go, it doesn't make sense to have one... say we get metrolink, the cap gets increased to 40,000,000 so those farce kicks off again in a few years... its so irish....

@veryowl, you said: "Separately, a new condition is specified that "the airport shall be subject to an annual aircraft movement limit of 13,000" as well as restrictions on the North runway."

Surely some mistake here: 13,000 per year is just 36 per day

so, while our lot are faffing over caps etc, the world moves on:

Emirates has extended its operations to South Africa, with the addition of a 4th daily flight on its popular Dubai to Johannesburg route.

The fourth flight will begin on March 1.

Taken from ittn

He's not even the leader of the Green Party any more. He's basically a very lame duck, and wants to keep his Green reputation intact.

He isn't, and as one of his chief haters I have a lot to say about him, but its not his problem really. That said, he should be a strong voice on the topic, which he isn't.

The trouble is, this isn't really anyones current responsibility, its just "the system as it is now". Theres got to be a way to intervene, but no-one seems to really be trying to find it.