Ireland Airport receives 12,271 complaints from a single person in 2021; sets record

Receiving complaints is not a new thing when it comes to the daily functioning of an international airport. Time and again, complaints arrive from passengers, authorities and even local residents near the airport. The nature of complaints may vary depending on who is lodging it. Moreover, such complaints can have a huge impact on ratings, reviews, and the ranking of the organization. It should be noted that such issues are taken by users through different mediums, when some people use social media to flag their problems, many others pen letters or even visit the airport directly to lodge their complaints.

However, imagine the scenario when an airport authority receives not one, but 12,272 complaints from a single person? Yes, a person actually did that thereby putting the airport authorities in a tight fix. In the said incident, a single person lodged 12,272 complaints in 2021 with Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) regarding noise from aircraft taking off and landing in Dublin, revealed the airport operator. Moreover, the airport authorities stated that the complaints from the individual accounted for 90% of the annual complaints received by the entity. 

According to The Independent, the individual has filed 6,227 complaints in the year 2020. Despite the fact that air traffic and aircraft movements at Dublin Airport declined significantly in the wake of the pandemic, the individual kept on lodging the issue. As per the statistics, before the unidentified person began lodging his series of complaints, Dublin Airport Authority was receiving around 1,500 noise complaints a year. That number went up to 13,569 in 2021.

Who was the complainant of 12,272 complaints in a year?

As per The Independent, the unidentified person belongs from Ongar, northwest Dublin. Authorities claim that this person has been largely responsible for a dramatic surge in complaints filed with DAA since 2019. However, removing the number of the person's complaints, the total for 2021 would've been just 1,296 complaints. So far, this year, the person has already filed 5,276 complaints in the first three months of the year. The daily average of the person's complaints is already more than that of the last year.

Moreover, it is believed by the authorities that most of the complaints are pointed out by residents living near Dublin Airport and on flight paths of aircraft, particularly Portmarnock, Swords, the Ward, and St Margaret’s. Also, DAA’s noise and flight-track monitoring system, which uses seven fixed noise-monitoring terminals around north Dublin, showed approximately a 97percent of commercial flights using Dublin Airport adhered to designated flight paths on approach and take-off last year, as per Independent.

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