Aviation: As a small boy, Pearse Cahill remembers his father Hugh flying the family by air from Dublin to Sligo, where they would have a picnic on the beach and be back in Dublin by teatime. Not a typical outing for an Irish family in the 1930s! But then Hugh was an exceptional man who was obviously bitten by the flying bug which imbued his family with an enthusiasm that lasted four generations, during which they created their own special niche in Irish aviation, writes Bill Maxwell.
The aerodrome he built at Kildonan, west of Dublin Airport, was a familiar sight for more than half a century. Thousands of young flyers got their training there as it became a home for the Irish Aero Club. Hugh hosted celebrities such as Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson, Jim Mollison and Col James Fitzmaurice from the crew of the Bremen. Their success boosted interest in flying in Ireland and Hugh arranged air shows such as Cobham's Flying Circus to come on tour. Women fliers such as Lady Mary Heath, Lady Nelson and Lady Mary Baiely gave instruction in a bid to get young people interested.
Indeed, Oliver Armstrong, the pilot of the de Havilland Dragon, The Iolair, which made the first Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Bristol in 1936, was trained at Iona, the first Irish commercial airline which was founded by Hugh Cahill in the 1920s. Later, when his son Pearse got the Fitzmaurice Award for service to aviation, he quipped that though Iona was not as big as Aer Lingus, it was older. In the decades following the second World War, when Pearse and his son Peter took over, Iona built up a successful business in air taxis. Newspapers used them to cover aerial photography and later they got contracts with the Cessna aircraft from Federal Express and DHL for mail runs to both the UK and the Continent. However the 1991 Gulf War with rising fuel costs, the withdrawal of Federal Express from Europe plus the onset of the executive jet forced the company to close in the late 1990s.
Pearse's daughter, Enda Hopkins, managed the flying school at Cork Airport for some years and the youngest member of the family, her daughter Louisa Hopkins, is a commercial pilot.
Though the days are long gone when you get flying lessons for a fiver an hour, a glance at the maps at the back of this book shows the growth in private flying throughout Ireland, as well as the convergence between the network of domestic airfields pioneered by Iona and the development of today's regional airports.
This book is a welcome addition to the growing literature on Irish aviation. In what is obviously a labour of love, Michael Traynor, who published the book himself with support from other enthusiasts, lists all the aircraft that went through Kildonan, their history and provenance. Even seasoned plane spotters and aviation buffs will finding something new.
Bill Maxwell is a former chief media spokesman for Aer Lingus (1981-91), and writes on aviation and travel
Iona: Ireland's First Commercial Airline By Michael Traynor, Michael Traynor, 356pp. €25