An Irish Aviation Enthusiasts day out
Behind the Scenes at Dublin Airport.
In this adventure
- Cheap flights? Not at £95 one way…
- Birmingham to Holyhead with London Northwestern Railway and Transport for Wales
- Irish Ferries Holyhead to Dublin Ferryport (Club Class)
- Morning Adventures in Dublin
- Irish Aviation Enthusiasts Day hosted by Dublin Airport
- Back to being a passenger in T2/T1
- Aer Lingus Regional EI3276 Dublin to Birmingham
- 25 hours and 36 minutes later
- Embracing the Community
With the tour over, a few of us went for Coffee in Terminal 1. It’s a chance to de-construct the day as well as catch up over a beverage.
And this is the part of the day I love the best – catching up, enjoying travel stories of others and sharing my own too. But even Esther saw that my exhaustion was kicking in… and that I needed to be airside rather than the ground side.
I said my farewells and headed into Terminal 2 for a check-in machine.
If you walk between T1 and T2 ground-side, this link bridge always impresses me.
With it happily spitting out a boarding pass for me (and on card stock no less), I was able to clear security quickly.
Time to go through.
That done, I was free to wander around the terminal…. and straight into the shopping mall.
Running the risk through Duty Free
In the main area.
After a visit to the small room, I spent a few minutes organising myself. That done – it was time to begin the hike to the 300 gates
Oh yes. A goodie bag too.
I passed by a couple of shops, looking for some nerd gifts. I spied nothing, but I did see some good signs I might need one day.
That includes the sign…
The less polite form of this used.
I’ve got the perfect place for this. On the front of my laptops
With the bus gates at the mid-300’s, I had a bit of a hike ahead. This was not ideal when you’re half-asleep, but what else can you do? I powered through and passed the water bottle options at Dublin Airport.
And there are many ways.
- You could pay for €1 for a plastic bottle
- You could pay €1 for a Just Water (as the airport tries to reduce plastic in paper-based bottles
- You fill your own bottle up for free (welcome to see at multiple locations)
- You could spend €5 on a metal bottle to hold your liquid in and fill it up
Some branding could had worked well on the bottles 😉
I have to give a big well done here to Dublin Airport for providing water options that allow people to move away from plastic. It’s a small thing in the travel experience (and I would have loved to see the plastic bottles eliminated completely from sale), but it’s a damn good start.
That – and a fair price for the water does make a difference. And yes – the water bottles are paid for with an honesty box. And people were being honest.
People aren’t that bad sometimes
With water in hand, I headed back to the 300 gates, and downstairs to the bus gate area
Vibrant Irish Light
The tail of an Aer Lingus A330
Aer Lingus BAe145/Avro RJ85 (operated by CityJet)
The perfect place to watch the world go by, and to enjoy the rocky road cake slice I took from the ferry.
There was a slight delay to boarding, with a special needs passenger being boarded first via a mini-bus. With them loaded, the main bus for our flight turned up
Boarding was announced with no priority – this agent had long learned that if you’re going on a bus, priority and status don’t exactly matter when its an ATR’s worth of passenger. This was in contrast to the Manchester flight with the agent trying to load a bus by priority and rows.
Which on an ATR doesn’t make sense in the least.
With me aboard the bus – as well as others – it was time to head towards Birmingham.
Next: EI3276 Dublin to Birmingham
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