prawn cocktail and no queues

A LUXURY Government jet not only allows you to fly in style – it cuts out the hassle of having to queue up at passport control and customs.

Flying in Aras Force One means Michael D can be waited on hand and foot by the flight crew.

He would then be met on the tarmac by a waiting car.

I know first hand how it works for I travelled on the Government jet for a week of engagements around the Balkans in 2007.

I accompanied the-then Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern and, although we landed up to half-adozen times, I never saw the inside of an airport.

We flew to Sarajevo where Minister Ahern met Bosnian leaders as well as going to the site of the Srebrenica genocide where more than 8,000 men and boys were murdered in July 1995.

Prawn cocktail at 36,000ft was a new experience for me as was being ushered off the plane into a waiting limo and taken in a police convoy through every traffic light on the way into Sarajevo.

It was the same story when we flew to the Serbia and Kosovo.

Ireland held the EU Presidency at the time so the trip was deemed essential with tensions mounting in the war-ravaged region and there were hundreds of Irish troops on a UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.

It’s not surprising Michael D has become accustomed to his mode of travel but in doing so his socialist credentials might also have taken flight.