New terminal, is it a white elephant?

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Lollix

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With the recession, is the new termnal in Dublin airport already a white elephant? I've noticed for the last few weeks that the airport is a lot quieter, and I don't see how they can fill the extra space. Anyone got any hard facts on current passenger numbers/trends?
 
Lollix said:
With the recession, is the new termnal in Dublin airport already a white elephant? I've noticed for the last few weeks that the airport is a lot quieter, and I don't see how they can fill the extra space. Anyone got any hard facts on current passenger numbers/trends?
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Agree Airport is quieter at the moment. Mentioned to guy at security desk and he said it was noticably quieter since Christmas.
 
One of the silliest things in my view about the new Terminal was that to build it they have knocked down almost all of the C Gates which was the newest and best bit of the airport (okay not the newest since Pier D was built, but still I think the best).

Pier C was built at significant expense completed I think less than 10 years ago ... and now it's been largely demolished ... that in my view was pretty stupid (I think a bit of it will be left as a corridor between the two terminals!)

The main terminal is pretty old and building a new one isn't a bad thing necessarily ... however squeezing it into the small site there and demolishing some of the existing capacity to do so is hard to think of as a sensible and cost effective way to do things. It may not be a white elephant - but I'd say it's probably more expensive than it needs to be and it's located in a silly place ... much and all as I dislike Michael O'Leary i think he has some valid points on this.

It would have been better to start again on a greenfield site on the far side of the airport (either west of the existing terminal or south of it between the existing main runway and the M50 ) .. I think a better terminal could have been built for less € there.

On it being quieter .. DAA normally publish monthly passengers stats .. as do the Civil Aviation Authority in the UK (for Ireland UK routes which are the bulk of traffic) though I've not seen them for anything in 2009 yet

Airport was fairly busy last weekend (arriving in Friday evening, out Sunday evening) .. didn't seem any quieter than usual to me - but I would be very surprised if traffic isn't down a bit
 
Flew out of Dublin to London last saturday, airport was very busy, but it was the school holidays though, flew back in tuesday afternoon and it wasn't very busy which I thought it would be at this time
 
Dublin is an extremely cramped airport even at the quietest of times. Compared to most airports in N. America and Europe it is small. The new terminal is much needed but badly planned, but unfortunately the airport authority is stuck on a small lot and vocal NIMBY opposition. Their approach is ad-hoc to say the least and I feel the airport will need redeveloping in another 10-15 years or so.

An alternative plan would have been to completey redevelop a whole new airport building/terminal in the centre of the land and then develop the runways around it, this would have made full use of what little land they have. Then a much better long term plan would be to move the airport completey out of that area to somewhere with more space. I'm sure a few 'landowners' wouldn't mind a compulsory purchase order considering the state the economy is in.
 
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