Seems we might just catch our flight tomorrow. Planes are now taking off and landing regularly and today's version of our flight took off (8 hours late though). And Etihad were nice enough to publish a full page ad in the newspaper apologising for the situation..

This is pretty bizarre now. Almost all flights out of Europe have been cancelled. And as each day passes, the next days flights get cancelled. We only just managed to get through to our airline yesterday. We'd already re-booked (i.e. bought new) tickets twice. First to Saturday night, and when that was cancelled I followed the airline's website instructions to book again; the earliest we could get was next Thursday! With frustration growing and no word from the airline on how we were going to get refunds for our cancelled flights we went out to the airport yesterday just to try and talk to someone. The airport was mostly deserted, bar a long snaking line around ticket desks for Aer Lingus and Ryanair. The food court upstairs was deserted except for stranded passengers asleep on couches and overpriced sandwiches and snacks going bad on the shelves. When we found the desk for our airline the guy we talked to wasn't even from the airline - he was the public face for a number of them - and offered little sympathy. Instead he told us that we shouldn't have re-booked our flights, that we should have come to the airport or called the airline because now we've multiple different tickets instead of one booking that could be re-scheduled. This made my blood boil, not least because the website suggested just re-booking the ticket there, and trying to call the airline only left us on hold for 20 minutes before disconnecting. But mostly because had we waited to go to the airport before trying to get a ticket, all the flights would've been sold out and we'd have never got a seat! And they keep saying on the news not to go to the airport! Thankfully, we got a call from the airline yesterday and they agreed to clean up our little ticketing mess and confirm our booking out of here on Thursday. But is that too early? Every few hours they seem to extend the flight ban and they're already talking about all of next week being cancelled. What to do then?

What are the chances that a volcano would erupt grounding most flights through Europe one day before I'm due to fly back to Sydney? Higher than I thought it seems. Everything had been going *grand* since we came back the other week. The sun came out for the first time this year in Ireland, we did our whole getting-married thing for the last time, I passed!! my driving test just yesterday, and I'm even an uncle again (and one month early!). Alas, but now it looks like we're stuck here indefinitely. The airport is closed until at least tomorrow morning, so even if it opens then all the people who've had their flights cancelled today will have to get flights first and we might not even get a flight tomorrow. Not to mention any connection from Abu Dabi. Of course not a peep out of the airline beyond the usual automated message on the phone. I'm told the last time this volcano erupted it was over 100 years ago, before flight, and that it kept erupting for a couple of months. I really don't want to take a boat back to Australia.

The flights back to Sydney were a whole lot better - half empty planes meant that a few times I had a whole centre row where I could stretch out and also, thanks to some pills, catch a little shut eye. Initially leaving London though, with the Air France crash in the back of my mind, I was really unnerved to see a few passengers running down the aisle before we departed, and the pilot subsequently announcing that a few passengers had changed their mind about the flight and that there would be a delay while their baggage was unloaded and a security check was done. I tried to push thoughts of Final Destination from my mind. I would have had the long flight from Dubai back to Sydney with a row all to myself were it not for some interruptions. Not long after taking off a posh, middle aged British lady stopped a flight attendant near my row to say "I'm seated beside an EXTREMELY large man, may I sit somewhere else?". That somewhere else was in my row. I still managed to nap a little bit, scrunched up in some sort of fetal position while still managing to keep my belt fastened. When I woke up though, another passenger tried to grab my attention. This guy turned out to be a 56 year old ganja smoking, professional niteclub dancer in Ibiza, living in Holland but originally Indonesian, with muscles that could only be achieved by a hell of a lot more time in the gym than I devote - who proceeded to give me his life story, including lots of photos of him with his arms around girls young enough to be his daughters. He got off in Bangkok though, on his way to a tour of SE Asia. The rest of us flew on, thankfully uneventfully, to Sydney 10 hours later.

Man alive that was a long flight... Due to fly out from Sydney at 6.45pm, I was naively confident of actually falling asleep on the plane. That idea was trashed when I saw on the airport tv screens that my flight would be making an extra - scheduled - stop, even though nothing was said on my reservation or ticket. Now I'd have to get off the plane in the middle of the night and there would be no chance of sleep. I tried to complain about this to the security people while I was being swabbed for explosives, but they said it happens quite often and people landing in Sydney always complain to them first. Great. For the next 16 hours I was squeezed in at the window next to an Indian couple who annoyingly fell asleep as soon as we took off and whom I had to wake anytime I wanted to stand up. 9 Hours into the flight we landed in Bangkok, but instead of getting out we had to stay onboard while a whole load of Thai cleaners got on through the rear door and started vacuuming around our feet and cleaning up the rubbish - there was soo much rubbish. We landed in Dubai 6 hours later; 6am outside the window and 40 degrees. Took off an hour and a half later on a fancy new A380 double-decker, but its kind of hard to notice its anything special when you can't see the stairs upstairs. Still, Emirates airlines has nice big tv screens with a bazillion movies to watch. I watched the first 10 minutes of a load of them and tried to sleep. Landed in Heathrow 7 hours later, not sure of the time or whether I should be eating breakfast or dinner. Had a panini and a crap coffee in a Nero's cafe - I think they must quarantine panini in Sydney Border Security for some reason as it was the first one I'd seen in a year and a half. A few hours later I was on a plane again, this time to Dublin, half empty because of the recession and the football on tv.. landed in Ireland only 30 hours after I took off. I am not stepping back on a plane again without pills! Now that that's off my chest, its nice to be back :)

Finally going back to Dublin for a couple of weeks tonight. Its been over a year and, apart from anything else, I'm curious to see just how much the place has changed given the crash. I'm not curious to find out just how sore the 16 hours + 7 hours flights will be. I checked in yesterday online, immediately after I was notified that it was open, and already all the exit row seats had been chosen! How does that happen? Memories of a bad Qantas flight coming out here have me crossing my fingers for a good seat tonight.