One emotion not much in evidence despite all the hassles of the past week is anger writes ELAINE EDWARDSat Dublin airport
THE TRUE cost of all the air travel disruption of recent days is the human one.
Yesterday, Dublin airport alone was a microcosm of all human life – joy, grief, confusion – all coming together in this transient environment.
One emotion not much in evidence was anger. While airports can bring out the worst in people, there really was a sense of acceptance, or maybe resignation, on the part of those who had been delayed or disrupted by the infernal Icelandic volcano.
Strangers were starting conversations with each other, and things weren’t going entirely badly for everyone.
Jean Feeney expected to be on a flight to Lanzarote at 2.15pm without any disruption to her travel plans. But there were others whose plans remained uncertain, or who were arriving at the airport after several days of delays to their holidays or business trips.
Florence Garrety and Margaret Pengelly from Australia had suffered something of a disaster. They produced a meticulously planned, printed itinerary taking in a couple of weeks in Europe and the US. Much of it was in ruins.
They were in Ireland for five days longer than they planned to be, and reeled off a list of the cities they will now miss because of the flight cancellations.
“We were supposed to go to Prague, to Vienna, to Salzburg. This is our itinerary mucked up beautifully,” Ms Garrety said.
They hired a car to see a bit more of Ireland and were hoping to take a boat to Britain today to get to London after they’d sought a refund for their cancelled flights at the British Airways desk.
“We’ve got to ring through now and cancel everything,” Ms Garrety said.
“We realise it’s nobody’s fault, but it’s such a muck-up,” her friend Ms Pengelly added.
A beaming Karen Abbott from Birr, Co Offaly, and her new husband Kevin McDonnell from Mayo were having coffee upstairs. They were hopeful of making a flight to Madrid and then a connection last night to Lima for a six-week honeymoon trip.
Although they lost some wedding guests last Saturday due to the travel disruption, they had a beautiful day, they said.
Karen texts later to say she never got to make her planned wedding speech on the big day, and asks whether she can thank her parents Richard and Sylvia for her “dream day” and her “Mayo mum” for all her love and support. She texts again to say it looks as though their flight is about to take off.
Ifeoma Nwajei, who is due to fly to Nigeria today for her father’s funeral, had just come to the airport to check the situation and to find out whether she will be able to travel via Paris as planned.
Her husband, Ignatius Nwajei, was due to follow her out on Monday. They gazed at the flight information screens. “They [the airline] said their first flights are starting from tomorrow, but they are not really sure,” Ms Nwajei says.
They are hopeful of being able to rebook if today’s flight is cancelled.
Francois Caquant was in a long queue for the Ryanair information desk, along with his family. They were originally due to fly on Sunday, but those plans were pushed back to yesterday. Again, their flight was cancelled. So they had made alternative arrangements through the French embassy to get home by bus through Britain, and then by ferry from Dover.
In the arrivals area, most flights on the screens were cancelled.
A Delta flight from New York landed six minutes earlier than its expected 10.30am touchdown. A flight from Copenhagen landed at 11.37, with the first of the luggage-free passengers trickling through to the arrivals hall within minutes.
Among the passengers was Stefan Godskesen, who lives and works in Ireland but who had been back in Denmark for a visit. He indicated he hadn’t suffered any disruption at all and his flight had gone as originally scheduled.
In contrast, Claus Lellinge and Ann Ellegaare from Copenhagen had lost five days of their holiday, and they weren’t looking happy.
Flights from Milan, Madrid, Galway and Istanbul arrived in mid-afternoon. The sound of jet engines almost came as a surprise after the silence of the last few days.
By 4pm, the length of the Aer Lingus baggage-drop queue seemed to be growing larger as the queues for information and ticket changes were getting shorter.
It was quiet for much of the day until shortly after 4.30pm, when a great roar went up for the 180 or so Irish troops who had arrived on a flight from Pristina, having completed a tour in Kosovo.
In a coffee shop, a smiling, polite girl handed back change and started to chat. Throwing her hands up, she said she was glad things were busier yesterday after the flight cancellations affected business. On one day of the disruption she didn’t work at all. On another, she worked just five hours.
“No work means no money,” she said.