NEW YORK



"Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Er, we've just had a warning light flash up on engine number 2 so I'm afraid we'll have to postpone our departure and head on back to the terminal to see what the problem is. It's nothing to worry about - the engineers think it's just a faulty pressure gauge..."

Now I don't know about you but this newly-adopted 'the wing's just fallen off' cockpit candour ain't something a nervous flyer (airline speak for 'shit scared') really appreciates. I want to be told that they're "going to fit a new part then we'll be on our way" as much as I want to hear "the flight ahead of us has just experienced some pretty rough weather that's going to hit us in about 20 minutes" and that "it was so bad they couldn't even serve drinks". And while we're on the subject, I don't need to know the names of the cabin crew, the captain's favoured sexual position or the fact that we're going to take a right turn away from the airport..... just get the damn crate up in the air and back down again without killing me, comprende?

Eventually, after a two hour delay where some overworked and underpaid technician tightened a loose screw, we took off.