I witnessed the Ethiopian 787 arrival in to DUB recently and ATC at that awful place never cease to amaze me........
The arrival of the 787 with an IFESD was known well in advance as he was returning off the ocean. We arrived in the 1/2 hour before he landed and all the airport & external units for the emergency were already in place around the airport.
The Ethiopian 787 landed without incident, vacated, talked to the Fire Service and when all was established as safe they elected to proceed to the terminal. Up to that point it all seemed to be handled rather well...... (Congratulations lads!).
With the Fire Service following the 787 was directed by ATC to a stand on the main terminal. For reasons best known to themselves the Fire Service then rolled out multiple hoses around the area in preparation to fight any fire they might have missed earlier. As a precautionary measure this would have been all well and good except that ATC had parked the aircraft on stand 204 in very close proximity to a BA A320 being refuelled and boarded for departure. The sight of the fire-fighters rolling out their hoses around an aircraft with 200 pax on board that was blissfully loading fuel from an airport bowser was rather comical.
I probably visit 20-30 different European airports every month, some of them with diverse terrain, ATC or cultural challenges. However DUB has to be near the top of my dangerous-avoid list. The ground environment is absolutely appalling with no less than 4 different taxiway nomenclatures guaranteed to confuse the visiting pilot with clearances delivered at break-neck speed. There is no recognition that visitors to DUB might be complete strangers and if you question a clearance the reply illicits a degree of arrogance found in very few places elsewhere. I can quite understand why they have a history of ground incidents.
There is little logic to the way things happen in DUB. Whilst the rest of the world is pretty much standard-ICAO Dublin carries on business in it's own little bubble.