Net Results: Are you one of those people that can feel your stress level jump perceptibly on catching site of Dublin airport?

I am. The State's biggest transport hub harbours bad memories for me. Monster traffic jams (made worse by the seemingly endless port tunnel road works), chaotic queuing at check-in desks, and delays have left their mark on this regular traveller.

Typically the sweat begins to flow as Whitehall Church trundles slowly into view on the road out of Dublin. It doesn't usually subside until the wheels of my plane lift off the airport tarmac.

Flying is generally a piece of cake compared to the elbow-jostling gauntlet that most travellers run at rush hour at Aer Rianta's flagship airport, which carries one million passengers every month during the summer.

I've spent hours holed up in the place, including a 10-hour stint during a European soccer championship watching a group of lads consume a couple of crates of lager and chant late into the night.

So it is no exaggeration to say that I wasn't particularly looking forward to flying off to Oxford last weekend. Even choosing to fly on a Saturday morning rather than negotiating the rush hour on Friday evening didn't remove the sense of dread when setting off.

What a surprise then to arrive at the airport at 8.30 a.m. and be able to check in, get through security, stroll through duty free and sit down with a newspaper in the departure lounge in 15 minutes.

So what has changed up at Dublin airport, which was memorably compared to the "Black Hole of Calcutta" by one media commentator a few years ago?

The big change for me has to be Aer Lingus' new electronic check-in facility that enables people to beat the queues of frustrated travellers.

The new FastPass terminals are located next to the existing Aer Lingus check-in desks and use touch-screen technology to make them simple to use. It took me just 30 seconds to get to grips with the new system and get my boarding cards. (That's a personal best for me and systems.)

The beauty of FastPass is that it enables people who have used their credit card to book their flights with Aer Lingus to simply pop in their card and see their flight details come up on screen. Once identified, it takes two or three more touches on the screen to choose a seat on the aircraft and deal with baggage. And that's it, check-in is over with no fuss.

Since the system went live in April, Aer Lingus says 35 per cent of its passengers are using FastPass. Heathrow, Alicante, Malaga, Paris, Amsterdam and Rome are the most popular destinations for travellers using the 35 terminals. The busiest time for use is the early morning when 40 per cent of all Aer Lingus passengers use FastPass, but this is still short of a target of 50 per cent by August.

So not all travellers have got to grips with the new check-in system. But this is hardly surprising - after all, people tend to adopt new technologies at different speeds. But my advice to fellow travellers is to get to know the FastPass system early to enjoy what will probably only be a brief period of calm before an electronic storm engulfs Dublin's flagship airport.

Aer Lingus has marketed its new check-in system as an innovation designed to take the pain out of travel - and in the short term this is certainly true - but it will inevitably lead to the replacement of staff with computers.

By cutting staff and using the terminals Aer Lingus can save millions of euros a year, and in the world of low-cost airlines this is the metric that counts. Expect the number of check-in counters to fall dramatically next year, when people are getting the hang of the FastPass system. Inevitably, this will mean longer queues at the machines.

Cash-strapped airlines in the US, such as United Airlines, have already gone down this road and the results are not pretty. One colleague who visited Boston last week witnessed chaos as foreign travellers struggled to check-in at machines as their European credit cards were rejected. Unfortunately, the few United Airlines staff at the check-in area were swamped by stressed-out tourists trying to batter their way to the front of the queues.

So we'll all have to hope that Aer Lingus brings in the terminals but keeps enough staff around to keep the queues moving. There are enough problems at Dublin airport without "computer rage" sending people's pulses racing.