IS Aer Lingus the last banner-carrier for the virtually extinct philosophy, the Are-you-right-there-Michael-are-you-right disease of Darby O'Gill and the Little People aboard the WestClare railway, late as always and compensating for a chronic inability to read a clock with a winsome and simpering charm? Hollywood no doubt found this sort of hokum engaging, but not the passengers. They chose transport systems, not to be entertained with homespun wit and engaging raillery, but for the transport system To Get Them There, And On Time.
I have written before about the nice people in Aer Lingus. They are the nicest, friendliest, most obliging airline staff I have ever encountered anywhere. If they can go that extra mile to do that extra favour for you, they invariably will.
They are charming and helpful and consoling when things go wrong. Which is often. But for the soothing and emollient personalities of individual members of Aer Lingers staff, enraged passengers would have long since crammed Aer Lingers management into one of those jumbo-sized blenders hanging from the wings of a 747 and turned on the power, turning Collinstown pink.
Aer Lingers-land
It is not as if Aer Lingers' old habits seem to be shrinking. Far from it - they appear to be spreading, and are now taking root in CityJet, which lets us know in no uncertain terms that we are in Aer Lingers-land with a greeting in that peculiar dialect of the first national language we might call Aer Lingers Lingo. Fawitcha Rowa, flutes the voice, and we realise with a sinking heart this is a prelude to a nice long linger on the tarmac at Dublin Airport.
Tell me. When did you last catch an Aer Lingers flight which left on time? And if it left late, as in my experience it invariably does, did you get an apology, much as I would like to think I would apologise for keeping you waiting, even if you weren't paying me to be on time? Probably not. Lateness is so much part of Aer Lingers culture that merely getting you there appears to be sufficient unto itself; usually not a word is said about tardy departure - it certainly wasn't last weekend when we left to minutes late.
Ten minutes is not a long time true. Yet turn up 10 minutes after a flight has closed, and prepare to spend the night at the airport. Concorde flies 200 miles in 10 minutes. Get to the theatre 10 minutes late, and you will have the opportunity to spend the next hour examining the furniture in the lobby. Get to Heuston Station 10 minutes late, and you won't even see the back of the vanishing train. Turn on RTE to minutes late, and you won't find that they've kept the programme on hold until you've tuned in.
Impressing foreigners
In the post-West Clare railway world which most of us inhabit, punctuality is not an optional extra, one of the delightful little luxuries which can impress girlfriends and foreigners. It is part of what we do. It is how we live our lives. And when somebody pays us to be on time, most of us are mortified if we are late.
For 10 minutes is not just 10 minutes. It might be as good as an hour or a day in terms of missed connections and missed appointments, and we are not interested in apologies which in the outward leg last weekend, was just as well, because we got none, just the reassurance that we would make most of the time up in flight. We didn't.
The return flight was half an hour late, for which we did get an apology, whatever that counts for. Little enough, to be sure. But one reason we were given for this lateness was precisely the reason we are invariably given it was due to the late arrival of the incoming aircraft.
Oh. I see. That's all right then, is it? CityJet or Aer Lingus aircraft are not library books or hire-cars, over which the lines have no control until a previous borrower returns them. The excuse that an aircraft is late because it arrived late is not an excuse. It would not pass muster among a group of kindergarten children.
The real question is then invited: Why are you running aircraft late, inconveniencing not merely this batch of passengers, but clearly, at least one earlier batch of passengers and, presumably, passengers for the rest of the day? Why do the bright souls who invent apologies think their airline is flying such thickos around the place that an apology which blames the "late arrival" suffices, and accordingly we will all gibber in forgiving glee at one another?
But it was not the only excuse - there was one other. It was that there had been luggage to load as well. What? Luggage? In an airliner hold? Well, dear bless my soul, no wonder you, were late.
The luggage factor
How on earth could Aer Lingers be expected to predict the astonishing and unpredictable phenomenon of luggage? It must be like turning up at your late-arriving plane and finding that you've got to fit the Curragh of Kildare somewhere in the galley. One can almost imagine Aer Lingers execs standing around, gazing and scratching their heads and wondering what on earth this heap of stuff could be. Dinosaur eggs? Prize marrows? Giant bars of soap for the toilets? Gee, I give up.
Maybe Aer Lingers' astonishment that they were called on to load this - what do you call it, luggage, is that it? - on the plane was the reason that when it arrived in Dublin, the dinosaur eggs, soap bars or prize marrows, sorry luggage, was placed on the wrong carousel, where it circled unindicated, unseen, unclaimed, while an empty carousel for 20 minutes drew the hungry and unrewarded gazes of those already late arrivers from London. Finally, we left Dublin Airport an hour late, our evening in ruins. Go raibh mile maith agat, Aer Lingers-CityJet.
Does Aer Lingers actually worry about this timekeeping? Are there inquiries about how such slovenliness is possible? How can other airlines manage to keep time, and Aer Lingers cannot? And how long before we finally tire of the Aer Lingers scheduleless charm and opt instead for sullen punctuality, with our evenings not in ruins and our connections caught?