The hugs for the bleary-eyed passengers off the planes which had crossed the Atlantic before dawn’s early light were so long it was as if time had stopped in Dublin Airport’s arrival hall.
With joyful screams on sight and happy tears streaming down their faces, parents embraced their adult children and, sometimes, the infant grandchildren they were meeting for the very first time.
Brothers and sisters clung tightly to each other, as the Omicron-fuelled anxiety over whether or not travel would be allowed almost visibly fell away from their shoulders.
According to the Dublin Airport Authority, Sunday was to be the busiest day of the festive season for the airport with more than 50,000 people due to depart and arrive, with most of them arriving.
Among them were Elaine O'Brien and Craig Liddiard and their nine-month-old daughter Grace who came in on the New York flight.
“We weren’t sure if we would travel because, you know, you get the guilt that you might bring something home,” Elaine said.
“We kept changing our mind every day this week,” Craig added. “And then we did all the tests on Friday and that was all good.”
‘New baby’
Trish and Paul Kelly were surrounded by their family as they waited to meet their daughter Tara and a very special new arrival.
"Tara lives in Atlanta but is coming in from Boston, " Trish said. "I went over in the summer to help her with the new baby. She's six months old now but she hasn't met her granddad," she continued and called Paul over.
“I am starting to well up already,” he said. Then his daughter and his granddaughter came through the doors and the tears came fast.
“Oh my God, the relief,” Tara said as she introduced her father and the rest of her family to baby Ailbhe. “I made the flight by about 35 minutes. They had to reopen the gate for me and everything, and I had to run through terminals and they lost my bag.”
But the stress of the journey was now in the past. “At least I’m here now.”
Brian Hanley and his two daughters, Lucy and Martha, were in the arrival's hall in Terminal 2 waiting for their uncle Peter to arrive from San Francisco.
The two little girls – aged five and eight – danced around excitedly waving a “Merry Cristmas” sign, the misspelling almost as cute as they were.
“He’s coming from a long way away and you never know with Covid,” their dad said. “It is going to be great to have him home for Christmas and I think our plan is to hunker down and just be really sensible.”
‘Kept praying’
Frances Byrne had driven up to Dublin from Tullamore to meet her daughter and her grandchildren who were coming home to Ireland from Orlando for the first time in Covid times. She has three sons in Chicago who have not been able to travel home since the pandemic was declared in March 2020.
“Two years is a long time,” she said simply and sadly. She has worried endlessly in recent days that the spread of Omicron would derail her daughter’s plans. “I just kept praying things would go well,” she said.
Nicole Pierce and her sister Leanne came into the hall with a giant red sign covered in tinsel ready to welcome home their sibling, Rachel.
“We were really, really worried that she wouldn’t get home but we’re very lucky that she’s made it now,” Nicole explained .
“I’m absolutely wrecked,” Rachel told The Irish Times. “And now I am getting interviewed,” she added. “I was actually home in August but as my sister said this is the longest we have been separated since I was in the womb.”
“They have just told me about the 8pm rule for the pubs,” she says. “If I’d known that I mightn’t have come home at all,” she laughed.
Then the three sisters practically skipped away, arms interlinked, Rachel in the middle and her two thrilled sisters wheeling her luggage for her. It was almost like normal times.
