As I grew older, and as I began to be exposed to people from different backgrounds and different cultures, even those within the small country I call my own, I realised that in fact I had been mistaken. I knew plenty of people who on first impression were intelligent, well educated and worldly that ultimately proved themselves to be the most homophobic people I had ever met.

People who had degrees, primary degrees, secondary degrees and even PhD’s who had the most retarded sense of equality I had ever seen. People who constituted the intelligentsia of Ireland, those who literally ruled our existence, were the ones in our society who had the most medieval attitude toward sexuality.

Equally I met people who were working class, had little if any further education and had no experience of the world outside our own parochial country, who couldn’t give a damn about who I jumped into bed with, and realised that love was a feeling shared by two people and that it didn’t matter whether those two people had compatible sexual organs or not.

One of my closest friends when I was growing up came from a very well to do, and successful Dublin professional family. A family of highly educated professional people. Wealthy, powerful and ostensibly intelligent people who had benefited from every educational opportunity available in this country. The best private schools, the best universities and postgraduate educations. The opportunity to travel and experience life beyond our shores.

It then came as a huge surprise to find that these people were exactly those who rejected me completely when I, with enormous trepidation made my first tentative steps toward being who I really was.

As soon as it became known that Leo was a ‘fag’, they completely cut me out of their lives. There had always been rumours of course, rumblings that all was not normal but once I actually plucked up enough courage to confront my demons and admit who I was, this family wanted nothing more to do with me.

I dealt with this as best I could. I told myself that it was going to be a while before the reality was accepted by everyone in my life, but I consoled myself that it would eventually happen, and that people who I had considered family for all of my life would eventually accept who I was and that normality would reign once more.

I was deluded.

20 years on, I very rarely encounter these people. I run into them now and then at funerals, and very occasionally at sporting events and those meetings could not be colder. A perfunctory greeting and nothing more. An outcome that admittedly is gratifying as much to me as I am sure that it is to them.

Before today I have thought very little about this. I buried it and didn’t discuss it with anyone else. I have effectively shut this particular episode in my life away, put it down to experience and moved on with my life. I have been in a very healthy and loving relationship with a man who represents the very best that a good education and moderate liberal upbringing can produce. I am extraordinarily lucky.

Unfortunately today, nearly 20 years after I first confronted the difficult decision in my life to be who I am, rather than to be who society would prefer me to be, I am horrified to realise that our society is not much better today than it was back then. There are still entire sections of our society who whilst ostensibly intelligent and well educated still consider homosexuality to be an aberration, and one that should be tolerated only for the sake of political correctness.

These are the same people who spread, and perpetuated the whisperings about Senator David Norris. That although there was no proof of his ever having displayed any such tendencies, his plea for clemency for an ex lover obviously indicated that he was a proponent of child molestation.

That his opinion that pederasty; the idea that an older man could provide guidance and education to a younger man, not in the sexual sense, but in the life lessons sense, had some merit, obviously meant that he was interested in taking every blond haired, blue eyed, 10 year old boy and doing unspeakable things to them.

In short, that as a gay man, he was in fact a child molester and paedophile at heart.

This despite the fact that at every turn, the unimpeachable character of Senator David Norris has shown him to be a champion of human rights, a crusader for the weak and disenfranchised and the very model of an educator and shepherd of young minds.

The fact that he was gay, and the fact that he had made an attempt to plead for clemency for a loved one, something that any mother, father, husband, wife, or friend in this country would do for a loved one, meant that in the minds of a certain section of the Irish electorate, he was eternally tainted.

It came as no surprise that these whisperings were made about David; it also came as no surprise that those whisperings were started within the ranks of the ‘intelligentsia’ in the nation. That it was lawyers, doctors, architects, politicians and most tellingly journalists who were tut-tutting about the homo and his frankly disgusting and dangerous views.

A further example of this homophobia was printed in one of the papers of record of this small nation of ours at the weekend. A newspaper that prides itself as having one of the largest circulations in the country. A newspaper, which is considered by many as THE Sunday newspaper.

It was by an author.

A man who has a couple of acclaimed novels to his name.

A man who was Auditor of the Literary and Historical Society in UCD during his university education. A society dedicated to debate and discussion, to the sharing and dissemination of ideas.

A man who was a diplomat for the Irish nation, who literally managed the relationship that our country has with the rest of the world.

A man who thereafter was the editor of Magill, a magazine considered to be one of the most groundbreaking in terms of moulding public opinion and providing investigative articles and colourful reportage in the Irish market.

This stalwart of the educated class, this champion of further education, this privileged progenitor of Ireland’s literary present and future presented to the country, in the nations favourite Sunday read, an article that represented the very worst type of hypocritical claptrap, scaremongering and incitement to hatred that I have ever had the misfortune to read.

However, as I read the article, I began to realise that it was all beginning to sound a little familiar. Horribly familiar.

What Mr. Delaney wants, what he was making quite clear in his ‘article’ is exactly the same thing that my ex-friends from 20 years ago wanted. What the stirrers who effectively torpedoed David Norris’s presidential hopes had wanted. He wanted us to be quiet.

He realises that we exist, but he would really prefer if we did not to pollute his existence with our constant demands for attention. Our constant ridiculous pleading to be considered normal. Our constant and irritatingly well publicised demands for equality.

Despite Mr. Delaney’s clichéd claim that

‘some of my best friends are gay’,

what he really meant to say was that

‘some of the people I know are disgusting homos, and I have to put up with them, because that is what society today demands, but really I would much rather if they would just be quiet so that I don’t have to imagine the perverted shenanigans that they might possibly get up to in the privacy of their own bedrooms’

Now, this from someone who had no education, or no experience beyond their own lives I might have been able to at least understand the reason for such a viewpoint.

From a man whose university education, career in the diplomatic corps and subsequent career among reputedly intelligent and open minded journalists would classify him as a member of the most privileged and rarefied strata of our society it is an absolute shocking example of how intelligence and education does not necessarily afford you any humanity.

Eamon Delaney, and the editor who accepted his work for publication are exactly the same type of people as the family who excised me from their lives so many years ago. They believe in a society where everyone is straight. Where everyone no doubt is white and catholic.

To paraphrase a tweet that I saw at one point yesterday afternoon, had Mr. Delaney substituted the word gay, with black, Jewish, traveller or handicapped, do you think that his editor would have allowed the article to run?

It is astonishing that in 2011, a full 18 years after the law criminalising homosexuality was repealed thanks to the herculean efforts of Senator David Norris that an article expressing these values could be allowed to be published in the largest paper in the land. And that it should be at the hand of such a person. An educated person.

It just goes to show, that as far as we think that we have come in Ireland, not everyone has made the journey with us.

You will need:

3 Leeks, washed, peeled and chopped.

A handful of toasted pine nuts

One packet of pancetta (Italian pork belly, available everywhere, the Lidl version is perfect)

2/3 good teaspoons of Pesto

A couple of good glugs of olive oil

A small pasta, shells or fusilli works well.

Method:

Fry off the pancetta. You want it to be crispy, reduce most of the fat out of it. Drain it of oil and then set it aside.

Add a good glug of oil to a deep frying pan or wide saucepan and sweat down the chopped leeks for about 10 minutes stirring occasionally. You want them to be fully soft and beginning to brown.

Add the pancetta and the pine nuts and the 2/3 spoons of pesto (to your taste really..)

Boil the pasta until al dente and when draining hold back half a cup of the water.

Mix in the leek, pine nut and pesto sauce and if too dry add a little of the water.

Serves 2. Double the ingredients for 4. Add more pesto if you really like pesto like me. :)

Just divine. Seriously.

Normal blogging service will be resumed shortly. I just needed to get that out of my system.

Over the last 3 weeks I have in the interests of laying this matter to rest, so that I could get on with my life, attempted to come to an agreement on a joint statement with Aer Arann, however suddenly last week, in the middle of negotiations on the matter, Aer Arann went quiet and I have had no communication from them in 10 days.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to get them to at least acknowledge that their actions and the actions of their staff were extraordinary and disproportionate to any perceived slight that the staff member continues to maintain she felt and for them to withdraw their unreasonable and unnecessary requirement of me to provide an assurance regarding my future behaviour on their flights.

I have had to endure significant criticism from commenters on this site and other sites which included such gems as

This just sounds like a stupid fag having a hissy fit when he doesn’t get his own way

and as a result thanks to a desire never to have to read anything like that about myself ever again, and to return some sort of normality to my life, it now appears as though I have no further action left open to me but to accept defeat. It does not appear as though I am going to be able to resolve this to my satisfaction, and I do not have the energy or indeed the motivation to spend any more of my time on it.

Once again many thanks to everyone who contributed to this discussion, to all the messages of support and those who helped disseminate this story.

As always you may leave comments on this post, and the other posts which will stay up as a testament to my experiences with Aer Arann, however I now consider the matter, however unsatisfactorily; closed.

I can also say with a significant amount of certainty, that I will never be flying with this airline again.

Leo

This afternoon, shortly after lunchtime a member of the PR team from Aer Arann made contact with me through a shared acquaintance.

They indicated that they were conscious of the ongoing issue, but they would really appreciate if I could find the time to come in and meet them and a senior executive in Aer Arann to discuss the situation face to face, and air my grievances, to try and find a solution.

This afternoon I attended a very polite and courteous meeting with the two members of Aer Arann staff that lasted approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes.

At the end of the meeting despite not reaching a final agreement or solution, the executive agreed that he would interview the staff member personally, and that I could be assured that he was a man of the highest integrity, and that he would come to his own opinion of the veracity of individual statements and revert to me with his conclusions.

I have agreed not to comment further about this matter (other than this update), on this blog, twitter or in the media until such a time as he reverts to me with his findings.

Thank you everyone who has left comments. I am very grateful to EVERYONE who has contributed to these posts.

I have put back up this post which is available here for those who did not have the opportunity to read it before I took it down on the advice of legal representation.

In the post, I outlined my experience aboard that flight and immediately afterwards and the actions of a member of the crew on that flight.

To summarise; during that flight, despite being myself polite, I felt that one of the staff members had been extremely rude and once the flight had landed, just before disembarking I had indicated that I was planning on making a complaint about her behaviour, namely her rudeness and lack of civility. It was at this point that the situation took a turn for the surreal, and shortly thereafter the plane was surrounded by Police cars, I was escorted from the flight and finally I found myself sitting in the Garda station in Dublin Airport.

The post was widely read on the day that it first appeared. I was contacted by a number of newspapers and radio stations including the Irish Times who ran a story the following day outlining the events. I was contacted by a number of lawyers who felt that it outlined a pretty clear case of defamation and I was advised to take down the post pending a possible legal action against the airline. This I duly did, and then spent the next week going back and forth with my solicitor on a possible case.

Unfortunately, after advice from a number of solicitors and barristers, it appears as this stage as though, as the law currently stands, a legal action against the airline is doomed to fail, thanks to a piece of legislation called the Montreal Convention.

This legislation, which was put in place in order to limit the amount of damages that an airline could have awarded against it in the event of an air accident, unfortunately through its language has been previously interpreted in an Irish court of law to mean that it excludes everything else and that you may not sue an airline for anything occurring on an international flight other than death, bodily injury or damage to or loss of luggage.

As a result, the only recourse available to me was to file a complaint to the airlines in question.

In response to this complaint, I received a polite reply from Aer Lingus which outlined their disappointment at hearing about my experience and their regret that I had not enjoyed my flight. It then went on to point out that Aer Lingus Regional was a franchise operation conducted by their partner Aer Arann, and as a result it would be Aer Arann who would be conducting an immediate and full investigation and that it would be Aer Arann that would contact me once this investigation was complete.

Despite sending a fax to Aer Arann on the same day as the fax to Aer Lingus, and a follow up email to clarify whether the fax had been received, it took approximately 3 weeks for Aer Arann to eventually reply to my complaint.

I have now received that communication from Aer Arann and although the letter has been marked private and confidential, I have chosen in respect of this letter to waive my confidentiality and I reproduce it here.

I will allow you the reader to draw your own conclusions about the tone of this letter, but I know how it reads to me.

In it, Aer Arann states that it has

conducted an immediate and full investigation.

It states that that investigation has completed and that

no further action is deemed necessary.

It then states that Aer Arann would be happy to welcome me on board their flights in the future

subject to me giving the airline an assurance that my future conduct will be appropriate and acceptable.

Finally it makes what is in my opinion a very thinly veiled threat that if I attempt to speak any further about this in any public forum, that Aer Arann will

reserve the right to protect its reputation.

I am absolutely astounded and astonished at this tone of this letter and I outline some of my issues with it below;

1)      At no point did Aer Arann contact me to ask me to participate in its investigation, and so I don’t understand how the investigation could be considered thorough. It appears as though the investigation canvassed the view and opinion of only one party to this complaint, namely the airline and its employees. The letter does not indicate if any other passengers were asked to participate in the investigation. Certainly there were passengers who commented on my original blog post indicating that they had been on the flight and had observed the events and concurred with my description of those events, however to my knowledge none of these passengers were contacted by Aer Arann or Aer Lingus in order that they could participate in their investigation.

2)      Aer Arann does not give the outcome of its investigation, other than to state that no further action is required.

3)      Aer Arann makes an unreasonable and unnecessary requirement of me that in order to fly with them again; I will need to provide an assurance that my future conduct will be appropriate and acceptable. As I maintain that my conduct has always been appropriate and acceptable, I have to assume, although it is not clearly stated in the letter, that Aer Arann is not of the same view.

4)      The final paragraph in the letter appears to say that should I attempt to speak to the media or blog/tweet or otherwise publicise any information about this flight, experience, complaint or response to my complaint that they will move against me. How it will do this is not outlined, but I fear you do not need to be a legal expert to read between the lines here.

I feel that have been treated appallingly by Aer Lingus and their subcontractor Aer Arann both during and after the flight and again in reply to my complaint about this incredibly stressful experience.

In addition, I had to spend the last month, constantly ringing the Garda Station in Dublin Airport to find out what was happening with the complaint that the crew member originally made about me. Despite the fact that I was released shortly after I was originally detained, because the crew member had made an original complaint about me, the Garda Siochana were bound to follow that complaint to a conclusion. The three possible outcomes were:

1)      That no further action was necessary if I accepted a caution.

2)     That the complainant (the Aer Lingus Regional crew member) would make a statement about the incident at which point the case would go to court.

3)     That the complainant (the Aer Lingus Regional crew member) withdrew the complaint at which point the case would be immediately and permanently closed.

Now obviously I was unwilling to accept a caution, as I did not feel as though I had done anything wrong, so I was anxious to find out whether or not the crew member had followed up with a statement about the complaint.

The Guard that I was dealing with, who was extremely helpful and courteous from the moment that I met him on that fateful night made numerous attempts over the space of three weeks to contact the complainant, but despite leaving a number of messages on her voicemail could not make contact with her. Eventually he confirmed to me, that if she didn’t call him back by the next day that he would attempt to contact her through the airline.

The staff member called him back the very next day, and confirmed that she was withdrawing her original complaint. She made a statement to this effect, and at this point the Guard rang me back to let me know this, and to confirm that the case was now closed and no record would appear next to my name.

You can understand my frustration.

This person made an untrue complaint about me to Gardai which resulted in my being very publicly escorted from a plane in front of 50 – 60 strangers. An event which I had absolutely no control over thanks to the (albeit necessary) importance that the Airport Police and authorities assign to such complaints.

After three weeks of hell waiting to find out what was going on with this complaint, the crew member decided to quietly withdraw her original complaint.

I cannot bring any action against the airline for defamation thanks to the Montreal convention, and as the icing on the cake, (or final slap in the face),

The incredibly terse and unfriendly letter that I received from Aer Arann in response to my complaint seems to adjudge me as guilty as charged (despite the staff member withdrawing the complaint), and I believe makes a thinly veiled threat to pursue me through the courts should I attempt to publicise my experience on their flight, or the response from their customer service department.

In addition, despite claiming in their letter that “Aer Arann places great emphasis on our customer service” the company fails to acknowledge that they had even received a complaint from me directly and furthermore didn’t even have the decency to sign the letter, but rather sent me a printout from a customer service supervisor.

I think that this speaks volumes for the priority that Aer Arann assigns to customer service.

In my opinion, airlines realise that complainants are unable to bring a legal case against them thanks to the Montreal Convention, and as such feel confident that they may respond in this manner secure in the knowledge that they are protected from any further action.

I am absolutely livid with this response. Not only was I treated abominably on the flight in question, their response to me also beggars belief. The national flag carrier of my country, Aer Lingus and one of the companies that they subcontract services out to Aer Arann have treated a paying customer no better than a common criminal.

It would seem to indicate that passengers need to be very careful about dealing with the cabin crew on international flights. I would certainly NOT recommend that you inform them that you are going to make a complaint about them.

In fact I would suggest not speaking, not looking at anything or anyone except the back of the seat in front of you, not purchasing anything from the in flight service. You might as well just pack yourself in your suitcase and go as cargo. It would appear to be the only way to ensure that you protect yourself from this kind of treatment. In addition, thanks to the Montreal convention, loss of your baggage is something that you can bring an action against the airline for. In a bizarre legal loophole, it would appear your luggage has more rights than you do.

Dear Mr O’Shaughnessy,

Thank you for your fax from yesterday concerning your flight with Aer Lingus Regional on Monday last EI.3289/27 June.

I was disappointed to learn about your experience on the Bristol to Dublin flight and having read both your letter, and online posting, can appreciate your feelings in the circumstances.

I had hoped to speak with you this morning, but was unable to obtain either your landline or mobile number, and am sending this letter via courier.

As you are probably aware, this flight was operated by our franchise partner Aer Arann. We have a commercial arrangement with Aer Arann who operate a number of routes between Ireland and the UK as Aer Lingus Regional.

We have already been in contact with Aer Arann, as the service provider, who will carry out an immediate and full investigation. I can confirm that this has commenced and Aer Arann will write to you directly upon completion.

We regret that you did not enjoy your flight with Aer Lingus Regional on this occasion and thank you for bringing the matter to our attention.

Yours sincerely,

xxxxxxx xxxxxx

Marketing Manager.

So… I suppose I will just have to play the waiting game and see what Aer Arann have to say.

Watch this space.

This has come as a bit of a blow, but you can be assured that I am not leaving the matter here. Whilst it appears that I cannot sue the airline, I can publicise the events. Please watch this space.

You can read the article here

This gave us plenty of time to relax after the festivities of the weekend and still arrive in plenty of time to get our flight.

I have always considered myself an efficient and accommodating flyer. I almost never have carry-on luggage, and if I do it is always below the permitted weight and dimensions. I am always ready with everything out of my pockets at the security check so as to speed up the process for me and for the people standing behind me. I always arrive at the gate in plenty of time, to ensure that I do not hold up the flight, and inconvenience other passengers or the flight crew, and this flight was no exception. Mark, my travelling partner and I arrived in Bristol Airport in plenty of time to return our hire car, check in, travel through security and get to the boarding gate. We were both looking forward to a hot shower and our own bed after a weekend of mud, tents and basic washing facilities. We had walked a good twenty miles over the last couple of days in sucking mud and we were tired. This was the last leg of our journey and we were both relieved to be nearly home.

The flight was operated by Aer Lingus Regional in an ATR 72,  a small regional turboprop aircraft and I was very happy to learn that we were seated at the very front of the aircraft which meant that there was no seat in front of me that could be reclined. At 6’7”, I barely fit into standard seats when they are upright, never mind when they are reclined.

We boarded the aircraft, made our way to our seats and sat down, looking forward to the short hop across the Irish Sea. It became immediately apparent however that the cabin attendant was not in the most accommodating mood. As I sat down I took my phone out of my pocket and switched it off for take-off, just as the cabin attendant passed our seats. She leant over and barked in my ear

“I hope that phone is off”

I smiled, nodded my assent and picked up the magazine that I was reading.

A few moments later as the cabin attendant was finishing the safety briefing she once again leant over to me and in a stern tone said:

“You had better have turned off that phone” “If you haven’t the captain will know and he will be able to tell me”

She gave me a fixed stare.

Once again I smiled a little less certainly and certainly less warmly and told her:

“It’s off”

The cabin attendant then pulled out the jump seat that directly faces the seat that I was in: 2C and sat down for take-off.

After take-off both cabin attendants moved to the rear of the cabin to get the bar trolley and Mark and I decided that after our day of travel and tourism that we would have a drink. As I had been driving all day we had been unable to have one, and now, with only the flight and a taxi ride ahead of us, we felt a drink was in order.

When the cabin crew pushed the cart to the front of the cabin to begin bar service, the attendant skipped our row and started at the row behind. I looked up and caught her eye, and when she was done serving the row behind I (as pleasantly as I could) asked whether we could get a gin and tonic (for Mark), a double whiskey (for me) and a chicken sandwich. This request was met with a withering look from the attendant, but eventually the drinks were forthcoming. Mark and I counted up all the sterling change that we had, and realised that it would not cover the £19 (€21.10) that the bill came to and so I fished around in my wallet for the euros that I had kept to pay for the taxi ride home. As I proffered the €50 note, the cabin attendant gave me a look as though I was handing her a newly minted turd and barked:

“Have you not got anything smaller?”

To which I replied:

“I’m sorry I don’t”

She then said:

“I can see coins in your hand there, what are they?”

I replied:

“Yeah, sorry those are sterling coins and I don’t have enough to pay the bill in sterling, I will have to pay in euros”

She then snapped the €50 out of my hand so hard that I literally jumped and barked:

“Right, well you will have to wait until I have change at the end.”

When she had moved on, Mark leant over to me and whispered:

“I can’t believe how rude she is being… I hope that she doesn’t give you back a handful of coins to get back at you”

Bar service continued. Mark and I sipped our drinks and quietly talked about our weekend; the bands we had seen, the people that we had met and how much we were both looking forward to a shower.

Almost at the end of the flight, the other cabin attendant came back to the front of the cabin with my change. As Mark had predicted the attendant offered me my change which came to €28.90 thus:

1 – €20 note and wrapped up in it:

1 – €2 coin

6 – 50 cent coins

15 – 20 cent coins

8 – 10 cent coins

2 – 5 cent coins

As the attendant offered me the change I looked at him incredulously.

“I’m sorry, but can’t you make any better change than that?”

He replied:

“We can’t, this is all we have.”

Again I looked at him, not touching the change.

“Sorry, but you mean to tell me that you have been all the way through the plane and served all these people, and not one of them has paid with a €5 note? Almost everything on your menu is €5”

“No, please take your change sir, I have things to do”

Realising there was little to be gained by arguing further, I held up my hand and he poured the change into it. Some of the 10 cent coins tumbled onto the floor. I looked up at the cabin attendant again and he gave me a smirk and walked off.

Tired, dirty, 5 minutes from landing, I realised that I just wanted to get home and so forced the handful of change into my pocket as well I could and sat back waiting for yet another perfect Aer Lingus experience to be over.

Whilst I had been looking out of the window at the approach to Dublin, I had stretched my leg out along the side of the bulkhead in front of me and it was now inadvertently lying across the slot where the jump seat folded into when not in use. When the captain gave the order for the cabin crew to take their seats the cabin attendant returned to her jump seat directly opposite me and barked at me once more:

“Move your foot!”

I quickly withdrew my leg and she pulled out her seat and sat down.

When I turned away from looking out the window to look at her, I saw that she was looking at me smirking. She looked away immediately and I stared. I couldn’t believe that she was so openly laughing at how she had got one over on a customer. I looked down at her name badge resolving to make a complaint and when I looked back up at her face she was looking at me again. I gave her what could be best described as a look which clearly displayed my displeasure and was just about to look away again when her dulcet tones pierced the silence again:

“Stop staring at me or I will report you!”

I looked up at her quizzically.

“I am not staring at you, I was noting your name from your name badge so that I can register a complaint about your rudeness and brusque manner, also as you are seated directly opposite me, there is really nowhere else to look than in your direction.”

“Oh, you want my name do you? I’ll write it down for you if you want.”

She smiled.

I looked at her.

“That’s fine thank you, I can remember it”

And then once again:

“Stop staring at me!”

I looked over at Mark. He was looking at her incredulously. I looked back at the attendant, smiled dismissively and then looked back down at the magazine I had on my lap.

Immediately after landing the attendant jumped up from her seat and immediately went into the flight deck. She returned shortly after with a smile on her face and walked back to the back of the cabin. A short announcement followed.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Dublin Airport, there will be a short delay as we wait on another bus to take you to the terminal.”

It was with astonishiment that Mark and I, and all the other passengers on the plane looked out the window 5 minutes later to see the plane surrounded by 5 police cars including 2 canine units with lights flashing and sirens wailing. The call came over the tannoy,

“Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen, you may now disembark.”

Being at the front of the plane, and the exit being at the back, Mark and I were the last people from the plane to disembark. Everyone else had climbed onto the waiting bus and was pressed up against the window looking to see who or what the Airport Police were waiting for. I made my way down the plane, past the smiling attendants and as I stepped out onto the steps the attendant pointed at me and shouted across to the waiting Airport Police officers:

“That’s him”

Two officers approached me and said:

“We are here to take you to the local Gardaí station. A complaint has been made against you that you were making threatening gestures and language against a member of staff and that she was in fear of her life and the safety of the plane”

I told them that that wasn’t true and was frankly ridiculous but that I had no problem accompanying them to clear up the matter.

At that point the passenger bus pulled away and after a short time on the apron I was bundled into a vehicle and taken the short distance to the Garda station in the Airport. During the short trip the officer in the passenger seat chatted away, asking where I was coming back from. I chatted back, describing our weekend.

When we arrived at the station, I was handed over to a Garda who asked the first officer what nationality I was.

He then asked me to follow him into an interview room where he asked me to sit. After asking for some ID, he then asked me to explain what was had happened.

I retold the events as outlined above and told the officer that I really didn’t understand why I was here. I had made a complaint about the change that I had received but that was it. I had never raised my voice, I certainly had never made any threatening gestures and in my opinion this was just a case of someone who had had a bad day, over-reacting.

The officer asked had I ever been in trouble with the Gardaí for anything like this before, I replied that I hadn’t.

The officer asked whether I had been drinking that night. I replied that I had been driving all day and the first drink that I had drunk was on the flight, and that I had drunk two whiskeys.

We then chatted for a while about why I had been in Bristol, about Glastonbury and about U2′s performance and after a couple of minutes the Guard then thanked me, asked me to sit for a while and left the room.

When he returned a few minutes later he sat down opposite me and said:

“Right, well it’s late and no doubt after the weekend and your couple of drinks you are tired, the complainant has just phoned to say that she is tired and very upset and distraught by the whole incident and will not be making a statement tonight, so as I have your contact details, we are going to let you go and I will call you sometime in the next couple of weeks to make a statement. Is that alright with you?”

At a loss for words, I nodded. The Garda showed me out of the interview room and into the reception where Mark was sitting waiting for me.

On the way home I got angrier and angrier. This was an example of an Aer Lingus employee who had given rude and bad service to a customer who had done nothing to cause her hassle other than have no smaller banknote than a €50 note, yet the employee had used her unique position to leverage all of the security apparatus in place in the Airport to embarrass me in front of the entire plane, including as Mark told me later, a colleague of his from work who had been sitting 4 rows back. She had called out 5 vehicles, 10 officers and a couple of canine units, at the States cost to take someone who hadn’t done as much as raise his voice off a plane that had already landed.

I have no idea why this woman took such an immediate dislike to me. I have no idea what perceived slight she had detected or I had exhibited, but it was apparent to anyone who bothered to notice that she was not well pleased with my presence on the plane. Even Mark commented at the beginning of the flight that her tone when instructing me to turn off my phone was unpleasant at best. I had tried to be as pleasant as I could the whole way through the flight right up to the point where she was obviously flashing me a triumphant smirk and even then all I did was announce my intent to file a complaint.

The more I think about this incident the angrier I become. All I wanted to do was get home and instead there is now a plane load of people who think that I am a terrorist or a drug smuggler or worse. I have become “known to Gardai” and probably now appear on some Aer Lingus and Dublin Airport blacklist, and all due to the unqualified statement that a member of cabin crew made against me. I was given no opportunity to give my statement.

I understand that these sorts of reports need to be taken very seriously. In today’s world trouble on an aircraft is a major problem, but I absolutely deny there was any trouble and further that I made any threatening gesture toward the cabin crew or the plane. No other passenger was aware of any trouble, there had been no shouting, no drunken brawl, just a complaint about change and the aircraft had landed and come to a complete halt before Ms ****** ***** got on the radio and made her report to the Airport security services.

There must be some accountability on behalf of the staff member who calls the security that it is a valid call out and not someone settling an score by incurring significant expense for the state and its taxpayers.

I am at a loss at where to go from here. Any comments appreciated.

All I know is that there are 40 or 50 people out there who when they see me next will have a little bell go off in their memories saying:

“Isn’t that the guy who was carted off the plane from Glastonbury by Gardaí”

*It has been pointed out to me since I posted this, that the services of Aer Lingus Regional are in fact provided by the airline Aer Arann.

For an update to what happened after I posted this, please click here.