\n Dublin Airport has said it had \u201cno option\u201d other than to close one of its two runways on Tuesday \u2014 diverting all of its night traffic to its north runway \u2014 just hours before the beginning of the State exams.<\/p>\n
\n The airport announced late on Tuesday afternoon that its south runway \u2014 which ordinarily operates all night-time traffic at the airport \u2014 would shut for emergency repair works from 11pm that night until 5am.<\/p>\n
\n The airport handled more than 90 flights during that period, the vast majority of them arrivals approaching from the Irish Sea.\u00a0On a normal night, those landings would be routed across the southern area of Portmarnock on the coast close to the airport.<\/p>\n
\n However, on Tuesday night until after 3am on Wednesday, the landing planes were routed across the northern area of the town.<\/p>\n
\n The St Margaret\u2019s Ward residents group queried the decision to close the runway, noting that little warning regarding the closure was given to local families, especially those with students taking their first exams on Wednesday morning.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
\n No noise mitigation measures were in place on their properties, they said, with overflying\u00a0jets for several hours.<\/p>\n
\n The group has campaigned extensively in recent times against the departure flight paths flown from the airport\u2019s newer north runway over heavily populated areas in north Dublin and County Meath.<\/p>\n
\n Spokesperson Liam O Gradaigh said of the south runway closure on Tuesday that \u201cparents had no advance warning to make arrangements in order for their children to have a full night\u2019s sleep before the first day of exams\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cSleep deprivation is well proven to reduce mental capacity. What alternatives were considered before this announcement was made?\u201d he asked. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the airport said however that the closure had been necessitated at short notice \u201cfor safety reasons\u201d following the identification of an issue with the south runway\u2019s taxiway. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had no option but to address the issue quickly to ensure safe flight operations for passengers,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dublin Airport has said it had \u201cno option\u201d other than to close one of its two runways on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1111,61,60,43,1112],"class_list":["post-481510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-court-and-crime","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-politics-and-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}