WHILE THE Taoiseach Enda Kenny assured everyone at Dublin airport yesterday morning that he wasn’t scared, the way his eyes kept darting toward the tiny aircraft made of wood and fabric suggested otherwise.
The short flight to Rush and back on a de Havilland Dragon built in 1936 was organised to mark the 75th birthday of Aer Lingus when the first flight from Baldonnel to Bristol took place.
The Taoiseach could have been forgiven a few jitters before boarding. But at least he was brave enough to fly, unlike Seán Lemass who opted to stay on the ground and wave the Dragon off on its maiden journey on May 27th, 1936.
Mr Kenny also had the good sense to send his Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar on the day’s first flight an hour earlier to make sure the thing could actually get off the ground.
It did, and when the Taoiseach landed with a gentle bump after 20 minutes in the air, he made a jokey little stumble while stepping off the aircraft.
Looking genuinely pleased after the journey over north Co Dublin at 3,000 feet, the Taoiseach described the experience as exhilarating and said that although there had been “a little bit of turbulence, it was nothing I couldn’t handle”.
When Capt Oliver Armstrong, a former RAF pilot, flew the inaugural flight, he carried with him just five passengers, only two of whom were paying.
On board that day were WA Morton, the director of Aer Lingus; Mrs Ó hUadhaidh, the wife of the airline’s chairman; TJ O’Driscoll from the department of industry and commerce; and a Mr and Mrs Fitzherbert. The couple continued on to London after the two-hour flight to Bristol by train while the three others took the return flight to Dublin.
News of Mr Kenny’s flight yesterday saw the press gather in large numbers. However, all those years ago the first flight from a new national airline was not deemed sufficiently newsworthy to make the front page of any Irish newspaper.
In fact, so unimpressed was The Irish Timesthat it only gave it one mention deep inside the paper two days after the event. The lack of publicity, and a one-way ticket price of £10, meant business was slow to take off and between May 27th and July 4th, just 49 paying customers used the airline.
On some days there were no passengers but the aircraft departed on time as the fledgling flag-carrying airline wanted the world to know that it could be relied on to keep to its schedules.
The aircraft which flew the Taoiseach and others, including Aer Lingus chairman Colm Barrington and its chief executive Christoph Mueller, was not the actual one which took those five passengers to Bristol, although it was built at the same time.
The very first Dragon in the Aer Lingus fleet was named Iolar, or eagle, and it was used for just two years before being sold to a small airline in the UK.
It was shot down over the English Channel by the Luftwaffe in 1941.
Its sister aircraft was painstakingly restored by a team of volunteers led by retired Aer Lingus engineer Johnny Molloy.
Once the weekend’s birthday celebrations are concluded it will join the Irish airshow circuit.
Yesterday’s Dragon flights were just one of a number of events taking place to mark the airline’s landmark birthday.
Last night in Farmleigh House in Dublin, the airline held a party for 300 guests, including President Mary McAleese, past chief executives and senior cabin crew, including its first transatlantic team. Today a party for staff and families takes place in a specially fitted-out airport hangar.
