MANCHÁN MAGAN'stales of a travel addict
I HAD MADE MYSELF a solemn promise never to visit Dubai. What, in the world would ever bring me to this former dusty smugglers port that transformed itself into an icon of gratuitous consumerism? The answer of course, I now realise, is Emirates. And, a month ago I found myself sitting for seven hours in Dubai airport awaiting a connection home from Thailand.
Pity me not, for you shall all be doing likewise in the years to come, as by sheer entrepreneurial adroitness Emirates and Etihad reorient the airline industry around Dubai and Abu Dhabi. They have already restructured the America to Africa route to go via the Gulf rather than Europe, and they now plan to bring a significant portion of Asia’s westward-bound population to the west via Dublin. Any doubts I had about their pan-global intents for Ireland were quashed by the range of languages their stewards spoke on the flight: Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Thai, Bengali, Serbian, Danish, Italian, Maltese, Portuguese, Spanish and French. “Fáilte ar ais go Baile Átha Cliath” suddenly seems quaint.
I was a bit reluctant to travel on an airline owned by a royal family since hearing about the experiences of a Canadian comedian, Russell Peters, on Royal Jordanian Airlines. He claims King Abdullah II of Jordan decided to play a practical joke on him after they had met at dinner in the royal palace in Amman, and when Peters arrived at the airport for his flight back to Canada he was greeted by two armed guards who arrested him and brought him to an interrogation room and began shouting in Arabic until finally they handed him a telephone.
It was the king, who was laughing heartily, saying, “Never be the first to leave one of my parties again.” The poor guards were mortified and apologised profusely, but said the king had insisted they frighten him.
This was all I could think of as I stepped aboard the Emirates plane last month. Would a playboy prince turn up in a Ferrari wanting to bring daddy’s toy for a spin? Would there be gold-plated bathrooms or marble plunge pools? I soon realised Emirates was a different type of royal airline; although it does have the backing of the ruling Al-Maktoum family of Dubai, the crown princes have about as much direct influence as the King of Tory has on Aer Lingus.
That said, there is something reminiscent of mythic tales of sheiks and sultans from 1001 Nights about the airline: with little more than a rub of a genie’s lantern it has managed to transform itself into the world’s biggest airline from beggarly beginnings with two borrowed aircraft in 1985. Somehow, it has managed to make vast profits while the rest of the industry nose-dived during a decade-long perfect storm involving the 9/11 attacks, the war in Iraq, Sars and the global recession.
Their magic beans are in the form of a new generation of jumbo aeroplanes, Airbus A380s and Boeing 777s, which are smoother and more efficient than their predecessors, and with vast swathes of extra space – the A380 has an upstairs candelabra-lit lounge. Emirates is now the largest operator of both of these planes in the world, with 239 extra aircraft on order.
One of the guardians of these sacred beans was former Emirates director Dermot Mannion from Sligo, who later tried to cast his magic spell on Aer Lingus too, but failed. Perhaps, it needed a royal touch. I realise Tory isn’t quite Dubai but I wonder if we gave the current King of Tory Island, Patsy Dan, a few of those fancy new planes could he and Mannion transform his forgotten old smugglers island into an international hub of pan-global travel?