AS INTREPID former pilot Willie Walsh ploughs on through the turbulence over Heathrow's Terminal 5, buffeted on all sides, he may be drawing some comfort from the epic voyage of another Irish aviator, 80 years ago this week, writes Frank McNally
Captain James Fitzmaurice's saga did last nearly as long as the current attempts of some British Airways passengers to relocate their luggage. In fact, it took him just over 36 hours to help pilot the first aeroplane to cross the Atlantic from east to west. Even so, it too was a fraught experience while it lasted.
At the start of 1928, the Atlantic had been crossed eight times in an easterly direction. Only an airship had done it the other way. Prevailing winds added hugely to the difficulty of flying west in an era when aircraft struggled to reach 100 miles an hour, and several lives and planes had been lost in the attempt. It took bravery bordering on foolishness to persevere.
Capt Fitzmaurice, then 30, was not short of courage. He had joined the British army as a cadet in 1914, only to be sent home when his real age was discovered. Later, still a teenager, he fought at the Somme and was twice wounded before pursuing his dream of serving in the only part of the western front even more dangerous than the trenches - the air. Unfortunately, or otherwise, he ran out of time: the war ended just as his RAF apprenticeship did.
So the Atlantic held no fears for Fitzmaurice who, by 1928, was a Free State Army commandant in charge of the air corps. The previous autumn, he had already attempted a westerly crossing, before bad weather forced a retreat. And when two German aviators arrived in Ireland in April, intent on using Europe's western outpost as a base for another go, they were sufficiently impressed to recruit him.
Captain Hermann Köhl was pilot of the Bremen, an all-metal German Junkers. Fitzmaurice would be co-pilot for the trip, alternating with Köhl in three-hour shifts. Baron Guenther von Hünefeld, a one-eyed, monocle-wearing Prussian aristocrat who owned the plane, acted as flight manager and cabin attendant.
Their attempt began shortly after 5am on April 12th. And as early as take-off, on a specially extended but muddy strip at Baldonnel Aerodrome, the local man's specialised knowledge paid off. Halfway down the runway, at 68 miles an hour, he grabbed the controls from Köhl just in time to lift the plane over a stray sheep.
Despite this and other problems, the plane narrowly achieved climbing speed and headed west. Escorted to the coast by an Army bomber, the Bremen passed over Clifden, where Alcock and Brown had completed the first easterly crossing nine years before.
After that, the aviators submitted to the silence of the ocean. In the trade-offs which flying required in those days, they had chosen extra fuel instead of a radio.
At first, weather and visibility were good. Even mid-Atlantic storms did not perturb the crew. In fact Fitzmaurice would later recall the almost transcendental beauty of the conditions: "Here and there ahead and to the right and left of us, local downpours of rain gave the appearance of vast, solid columns reaching up from the ocean surface to support the enormous banks of dark cloud reclining in the sky. Several isolated snowstorms looked like giant marble pillars fulfilling the same purpose.
"It all presented the appearance of a high-vaulted dome and arched cathedral of colossal proportions, the dome and arches being supported by gigantic vari-coloured columns and pillars, the whole illuminated by sunshafts flooding through great windows and apertures in the sides and ceilings. The lights and shadows were awe-inspiring and deeply majestic. It looked so completely unearthly, it brought us close to God."
But from then on, any closeness to God was of the kind that had claimed their lives of their predecessors. They were soon badly off course, thanks to the infamous fog banks of Newfoundland, the wind and sleet, the magnetic disturbances playing havoc with their compass, and the dense cloud that prevented all but occasional glimpses of stars by which they could navigate.
Then too came the fatigue, and the mirages it brought - of cities and airfields, among other things. Finally they saw a lighthouse - a real one. And with fuel running out, they put down on a frozen lake in Greenly Island, on the Gulf of St Lawrence, Quebec. The ice cracked as the plane stopped. But the crew were safe and about to be acclaimed as heroes.
Their lap of honour lasted two months, with receptions in cities including New York, Berlin, and Dublin, where they attended a banquet in Clery's Restaurant and were presented to large, cheering crowds from a platform in front of the store.
Reporting their crossing, The Irish Times suggested they had survived a "gigantic gamble with fate". But they had also vindicated a prediction made before the flight - attributed to a "semi-official" source - that "this country will be the centre of trans-Atlantic aviation in the future".
This centrality has diminished somewhat in recent decades. So has the romance of air travel. Even so, Irish aviators continue to loom large. It is to be hoped that Willie Walsh can draw comfort from his rich heritage as he attempts to negotiate the dense fog-banks over Terminal 5, beset by cruel visions of what the project was supposed to look like, his ultimate fate still hanging in the balance.