The dot.com generation swelled the numbers yesterday at Baldonnel for the second day of Air Spectacular 2000.
It was Father's Day. Pale-faced young Net browsers braved unusually high temperatures to accompany gleeful dads around the Hurricanes and Fokkers beloved of latter-day Biggles fans. These were strategically placed at the entrance and served to whet the appetite on the journey from car park to action. Mothers and daughters affected interest and ogled dutifully, given the day that was in it.
The younger dot.com types, however, exacted a heavy price in many cases - disdaining the majestic live acrobatics of the Italian Frecce Tricolori and the splendid Hungarian Malev trio, even, to seek shelter from the midday sun inside congenial simulators.
These offered the chance to enjoy an F16 Tornado "operational low-flying mission" at £3 a go: "Please remain in your seat until the simulator has landed. Thank you."
The arrival of the President, Mrs McAleese, in an Air Corps helicopter to open the proceedings caused a flurry of security activity around the VIP tent. Mrs McAleese flew past and waved from the window. "You have no idea how good you look from the sky," she told her audience of 100,000 after being formally greeted by Brig Gen Pat Cranfield, the Air Corps' GOC, who played host, and Brig Gen David Stapleton, Chief-of-Staff of the Defence Forces. Mr James F. Reilly II, whose west Cork grandparents took four days to get to America in the 1940s, was there, too. He's a 46-year-old astronaut from Texas with 211 logged flying hours in space. Ms McAleese handed him an Irish flag which he will take with him next July on the STS-104 voyage to the International Space Station. His cousins were present in numbers, from all over Ireland. They were incredibly proud of the affable James, who ascended before their eyes into the VIP tent.
In spite of the family atmosphere, there was a serious side to things, as exemplified by the protests at the President's attendance from Mr Joe Murray, of AFrI, the justice and peace organisation, and Mr Mark Doris, of the West Papua Action Group.
Mr Tom Hyland, of the East Timor Group, had called on Mrs McAleese to lead a minute's silence because of the salient fact that such military aircraft delivered death. These were warplanes, after all, NATO weapons of mass destruction, some of which had seen active service in the skies above Bosnia and Iraq.
Mr Doris warned against the family-style carnival celebration of a militarism that had been abused to victimise hundreds of thousands of civilians by dictators from Indonesia's Gen Suharto to Nigeria's Gen Abacha. Also ominous was the argument, widely mooted yesterday, that shows such as this were just a softening-up process designed to tie our Partnership for Peace status even closer to NATO.