Nikki and I had a good time in Dublin last week, and a huge thankyou to the organising crew. . While I was at ILUG, she explored the city pretty comprehensively, and avoided getting too wet. Saturday's coach trip to Malahide and Howth was a neat way to wind up the proceedings.
But Sunday didn't go so well - but at least the weather was good; warm and sunny We'd heard during the week that Dublin airport's ATC system had failed - apparently it crashed on Wednesday - and there were some issues with getting it all going again. At breakfast Bruce said they'd heard their flight to Chicago was delayed, so we checked with bmi around 10 for our 15:40, no delays reported. We decided to take the scenic 16a bus out to the airport as we had plenty of time. Must have been at least 3 hen/stag parties checking in at various airlines. Then the delays started - first to 16:10, then 16:30, and the pilots turned up in the lounge with us. They were told that the inbound would land around 16:05, so we sauntered down for around 16:15, and it wasn't there - it arrived a bit later. Boarded around 17:00 we then had a slot delay for 45 mins, and finally took off around 18:00.
We had a great view of our house and village from around 5000 feet as we made the initial approaches to LHR, down around 7pm. Then we had to wait nearly 40 minutes for baggage as the handlers had been reassigned to another arival, or something. Finally made it home just before 9pm.
I did, however feel even more sorry for anyone on the 11:40 Air Lingus flight to Atlanta (Julian Robichaux?) which, according to the departures board, had not left and had no posted time by the time we got away.
Mick Moignard June 9th, 2008 02:51:51 AM