Storm Ciara, you were seriously no craic! 3 flights, 3 aborted landings and 32 hours to get from Dublin to Gatwick.

After an incredible weekend taking my boy to his first 6 nations match (well done Ireland), we started the journey home to Gatwick from Dublin on Sunday morning. The first 30 minutes were fine but as we descended through the clouds things became quite hairy. With all the swaying and dropping, my boy, along with many others, filled up a sick bag. It was one of those moments you try to hide your fear and tell your child it's nothing to worry about but inside you have all sorts of horrible thoughts.

Landing aborted and we're back above the clouds, circling Gatwick for over an hour on a very quiet plane (luckily my boy fell asleep). We're running out of fuel the pilot says so we're going to divert to Luxembourg....actually scrap that its Frankfurt. 

Touchdown and my boy woke up with a relieved look which soon disappeared when I told him we were in Germany. Soon we were told that landing in Gatwick was not possible and we'd be heading back to Dublin. 4 hours on the ground whilst about 20% of passengers decided to leave. Morale was very low until I pulled out a 12 pack of Tayto crisps and shared them out. The joy on peoples faces!

Back to Dublin but Ciara decided to blow upon landing to give us a last minute aborted landing. Eventually after about 10 hours and we were in an airport hotel courtesy of Aer Lingus. After a days wait, we flew home yesterday evening (with Mick McCarthy on board I might add) and landed after 7......not without another aborted landing for good measure.

Whilst all of this was going on, my inbox was filling up with emails from corporate clients about cancellations and diversions but was reassured as I could see my incredible team all over the situation rebooking and supporting them along their way.

The moral of the story? Would I fly again? Absolutely! This just reinforces how safe air travel is and how incredibly trained pilots are.

Additional learnings:

• If you're a frequent traveller, eventually some sort of chaos will catch up with you so be prepared
• Always pack a charger bank and additional pants and socks :-)
• Aer Lingus all the way! In times of crisis, you'll be lucky if you have Aoife and Maeve onboard, cabin crew on EI236. They were so calm and professional.
• Storms aren't necessarily a bad thing! BA112 made a record time from New York to London.
• Tayto crisps should be used as a tool for world peace!