The strike was good news for novelists, if no one else.
At lunchtime yesterday the departures hall in Dublin Airport was like the National Library reading room, as frustrated travellers passed the time with paperbacks. Some were studying newspapers, too, but the airport's Hughes & Hughes shop confirmed that book business was brisk, with titles by Maeve Binchy and Marian Keyes doing particularly well.
Only the people queueing forlornly at the unstaffed check-in desks were without some kind of literature, and many of them were reading the riot act instead.
Karin Heyer was reading both. German-born, Dublin-resident and - some time yesterday, she hoped - Zurich-bound, she put down her novel and brandished a leaflet the strikers had handed her. On this she had underlined a sentence in which the union complained that "restaurant workers" were paid more than Aer Lingus clerical staff. "So why don't they get jobs in restaurants?" she asked.
"Yes, I am annoyed. I'm a housewife and I've never gone on strike. I'm annoyed that they picked the busiest weekend to do this. Now we have to see what we can do, which is maybe not to fly Aer Lingus again, although in Ireland that is not easy."
Rosemary McKinley, en route to Chicago, couldn't afford to get angry. She had almost used up her supply of blood pressure tablets during a 10-day visit to Ireland, and two days of trying in vain to get through to the Aer Lingus helpline hadn't helped. Now she'd been told her flight would be two hours 20 minutes late.
"That wouldn't be too bad, but if it's any longer I won't be pleased," she said, adding that she couldn't understand why the strike had been allowed to happen. "It's a small amount of money, and the workers seem to have waited a long time for a rise. If it means putting up air fares a little, I'm sure people would still pay."
Nearby, a group of travel agents from California had been told their flight to Los Angeles would take off four hours late, and were sceptical. "No," said Ginny Mraz, when asked if she was confident of getting away, "and if we don't get a flight today, we'll be stuck here till next week because of the holiday weekend."
The group had been in Ireland on a reconnaissance trip, her colleague Wanda Bergk explained. They would have good things to say about the country, she said, "but we're not pleased about this and we're not going to recommend Aer Lingus ever again".
Waiting for news about their flight to London were Robin and Jane McManus, a brother and sister originally from Longford but returning "home" to London, where both their parents work and live. A boarding student at Cistercian College, Roscrea, Robin was hoping for more details when the desks reopened, "but it'll be mayhem then".
