It might seem petty to complain after you've escaped an emergency evacuation with your life - but complain we will, if only because of what Ryanair claimed on its website, writes TED SHEEHY.
I must confess I am concerned that Michael hasn't called. But then I saw him pictured on the front page of this newspaper on Tuesday, puckering up to his horse, Hear the Echo, which had won the previous day's Irish Grand National at Fairyhouse.
Sure, I'm thinking, he must have been busy combing her all weekend. How could he have time to call us? And then, after the win, he must be celebrating for a few days, not to mind personally hand-feeding the nag a few bags of his finest oats.
But a little voice of the inner variety keeps insisting that he does have plenty of people who work for him at Ryanair. People who might have called, or written.
"How are you," they could ask, "since you had to emergency evacuate our flight FR1216 in Limoges on Good Friday?" "Glad to be alive," we would reply. "Thank you for asking." And a dialogue might then begin. We might, for instance, be able to help them with their investigation into the "incident at Limoges", as the press release on the Ryanair website described it.
It went something like this.
"Is there still cloud out there?" I ask, as we come in low on the approach.
"Yes. And we're coming in too fast," she says, with more air miles clocked up than I.
We bump about a bit in the cloud, but it's nothing exceptional. Then we land, fast and hard. We're very alert as everything begins to play out slowly in the cabin. Reverse thrust kicks in with a roar and the plane judders.
A lone passenger claps, like the one person in company who mistakenly laughs, loudly, at an insensitive joke.
"That's a bit previous," I say, referring to the applause.
"There's smoke from the wheel," she says, looking out the window to her left.
Then there's a thump and we can't see out the window any more, it's covered in flying mud. The forward motion finally ceases and the captain's voice comes over the speakers. "Evacuate the plane." Now everything begins to speed up again. Bemused passengers start reaching for their luggage in the overhead lockers. Others leave their seats, some with small children, and walk forward up the aisle to the front doors.
A cabin crew member goes down the aisle to remonstrate in French with passengers, who are trying to retrieve their belongings and preventing others from escaping.
We walk up the aisle in our turn and leave by the right-hand and left-hand slides. I'm luckier turning left because the slide is not bucking about in the wind gusting from the right hand side of the plane.
We find ourselves in our shirt sleeves in driving rain and hail, in a waterlogged field beyond the end of the runway. The plane is canted slightly to the right, the engine about a foot off the ground. People are still coming down the slides, helped off by other passengers.
Others are now wandering aimlessly about, disorientated, before it dawns on them that they need to get away from the plane, just in case. The rain is pelting down on us in a strong cold wind. I am soaked to the skin. What was the title of that film, I wonder, the one with Jeff Bridges in it? Two fire tenders arrive at the scene. Small children are protected from the elements under parents' jackets. Smokers light cigarettes for others who left theirs on the plane. There are a few tears, but mostly there is an unspoken awareness of what might have been. There are looks exchanged with people from the seats around us, faces of unknown people I will never forget.
The 170-odd passengers are gathered in loose, small groups at the end of the runway, 20m-30m from the plane and exposed to the elements without any shelter. Nobody is in charge. One of the fire crews is hosing down the wheels on the left hand side undercarriage. Some passengers take photographs of the stricken plane, me among them.
About 15 minutes after our "landing", soaked and chilled to the bone, we start walking back down the runway towards the terminal. It takes 10 to 15 minutes, and thankfully the rain finally begins to ease off. Two or three small two-seater airport vans pick up some of the children.
It is chaotic in the small terminal building. Our flight was due to be turned around right away so there are passengers waiting, their luggage checked in, whose plane is now resting off the end of the runway. The airport is closed and other arrivals are diverted to other regional airports.
The airport gives us coffee while it juggles the needs of arriving and departing passengers, all crowded together. It is easy to tell us apart. We are wet and confused, while they are dry and vociferous.
Nearly two hours later we give our names and telephone numbers and reclaim our luggage in a room upstairs.
We will have to address any complaints to Ryanair in writing, we are told.
Having escaped with our lives it seems petty to complain that we had a bag damaged, that a gift bottle of champagne was broken, or that we had incurred the unexpected cost of mobile phone calls to friends and family to assure them of our well-being before the news broke.
It seems petty to complain that all was not as it should have been with the arrival of flight FR1216 from Brussels Charleroi to Limoges on March 21st last.
But we will complain, if for no reason other than because Ryanair misled the world when it said on its website that we "were transferred by bus to the terminal building". There are, we will tell them, no buses or minibuses or vans to cover this eventuality at Limoges airport.
And not having those basic facilities, we wonder how prepared Limoges might be if our landing - "on schedule at 16.00 (local)," as trumpeted in the first line of Ryanair's incident statement - had turned out worse than it did. Some things, we would like to remind them, are more important than being on time.