First experience of Shannon airport today, flying LCY - JFK, and I've got to say I was mightily impressed at the turnaround speed by BA. I was first off (front row), and whilst I had to wait to be processed in the second group by US immigration (as we had bags in the hold - they deal with hand-luggage only passengers first), the delay was only a couple of minutes. We were then seen straight away by an US border guard, and the second we arrived back at the gate they started boarding. It couldn't have been any smoother / faster if they'd tried. Truly impressive stuff. ^

BUT, what do people make of Shannon airport? It works fine for this BA gas fill-up and border clearance, but (I found it) an odd place. The inside of the terminal is a bit old-fashioned, and looking out of the airplane window on the way in it was like looking at a place which is well past its glory days - old ground fleet service vehicles seemingly dumped at the side of the tarmac, big 'S' 'H' 'A' 'N' and 'O' letters lying on their side in what looked like a garden - obviously part of the old airport signage which had now been dumped - and just lots of planes parked-up, seemingly going nowhere quickly. It's like a small-scale Arizona plane graveyard, mostly full of SpanAir metal.

Do many flights actually go direct from here, or is mostly planes stopping off for a quick US border clearance?

And what do other FT'ers make of the place?

As an aside, got chatting to someone on board who told me they'd been on the other day with a group of 15 execs travelling together, and 10 of them had said they hated the whole Shannon stopover and vowed never to use the service westbound again. I really don't see the issue - its a (minor) hassle having to board twice, but with so few people (even fully laden), its still pretty painless in the grand scheme of things.

The crew said the route has been chocca these last few weeks, in both directions. So must be good news for BA.^