You're all packed and ready for two weeks of fun in the sun? Well, be prepared. Be very prepared - because for many, unfortunately, the "fun" starts here - probably somewhere on the M1, somewhere not far from the Dublin airport roundabout . . . somewhere very like Dublin airport.
With an average of 350,000 passengers passing through each week, it is little wonder that a terminal building that had a seventh of that number only 18 years ago can often more closely resemble bedlam than the cosmopolitan hub of international comings and goings.
"Please check in an hour before departure," say most airline tickets. If passengers had any sense, commented a taxi-driver on the way out to the airport on Tuesday, they'd leave themselves about three hours. "That airport is a disaster," he said sagely.
Individual airlines would probably not go so far as to describe their Irish operational headquarters as a "disaster", but even Aer Lingus said diplomatically during the week that its staff was "pulling out all the stops to deliver [its] product under extremely difficult circumstances".
A senior source at Servisair, which provides ground services to, among others, British Airways and Delta Airlines said his staff was performing "heroically" in "a very frustrating situation", while a member of Ryanair management described Aer Rianta's running of Dublin airport as "inefficient" and "bordering on lunacy".
Frustration centres most acutely on the new extension. This would double the airport terminal's floor capacity, increase the number of check-in desks from 98 to 146 and double the number of baggage carousels to 10.
"Yes, spanking new and empty," said a spokesman for Aer Lingus. The airport will have had 14 million passengers through by the end of 2000 - compared with 5,099,253 in 1990.
Compounding the effect of this rise in passenger numbers, check-in desks have been squeezed to accommodate more airlines. Aer Lingus has 10 fewer desks than it had this time last year.
So, while the current terminal is so busy that seating has had to be removed in the arrivals area to provide extra standing room, queues at check-in desks lengthen beyond the bearable. The second-floor restaurant is often packed.
But the extension remains - three months after Aer Rianta promised it would be ready - an oasis of unstaffed desks. So pressurised is the existing space that Servisair is now checking in its passengers outside, next to the carpark. "Well, they're not very happy about it," said a Servisair source when asked how its passengers reacted to check-in conditions at Area 10. "It's very difficult for us because the bags don't go through the main terminal. They have to be loaded onto field trucks and driven by road around to be loaded onto planes," he said. The new extension is not operating yet, says Mr Oliver McCann, public relations manager with Aer Rianta, because the check-in desks have not been fully fitted with monitors, and airline staff have not been trained to use its new Common-User Terminal Equipment (CUTE) check-in system. He also cites a recent scaffolders' strike and weather problems as factors in its opening being delayed.
The CUTE system, as the name suggests, means check-in desks will no longer be dedicated to individual airlines. Equipment at each will be suitable for each airline. Overhead monitors, instead of individual airline signs, will display whichever airline's logo is needed at any time. Where now at one time there could be 10 Aer Lingus-dedicated desks empty while British Midland is trying to check in 400 passengers at two desks, CUTE will mean the busier airline could take over all 12 desks during the rush.
Though Ryanair says it neither wants nor needs to buy into the CUTE system, other airlines say the need for staff training as an explanation for the delay is a red herring.
"The issue of training doesn't even arise until we get into the extension," said an Aer Lingus spokesman.
Mr McCann's staff is justifiably proud of the difference the extension will, eventually, make to the "Dublin Airport experience". Strolling about is like wandering into San Francisco international airport or the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris - all polished granite floors, frosted-glass countertops and sleek spotlighting. The restaurant on the second floor is to be replaced by a "food court" with different eateries including an Italian food company, McDonald's and a new bar, Skyview, being run by the same people who own Thomas Read's pub in the city centre.
The thing is, do people want to be tempted to spend more time at the airport? Will the changes get passengers through faster? Dr Sean Barret, of the Department of Economics at Trinity College, thinks probably not. "I think the only way to really address the airport's problems is to build two more separate terminals - one run by Aer Lingus, one by Ryanair and the other accommodating the other airlines. Competition between and within airports is necessary," he says. "It is the only way I see to provide the rationally run airport system the country needs."