Things you don't want to hear at 30,000 feet

I've never been on a plane that has "developed a technical fault". It's just not a nice expression. It's right up there with your doctor saying "we've found a growth". It's just not good news.

So, I was on the way to the UK two days ago on what should have been a very short flight, maximum 50 minutes. Everyone had boarded and the flight attendants had gone through the safety drill. Let me re-live the scene again.

We taxi out to the runway and straighten up. The engine noise increases as we gain speed and everyone braces themselves for the impending thrust. All of a sudden the ground outside is not moving as quickly as before and I realise we are slowing down. The noise drops to a more moderate level and the captain is telling us "folks, we've developed a technical problem so we're on our way back to the stand".

40 minutes later the captain is telling us that the maintenance people have "come up with a fix" and that we should be on our way soon. I have a vision of a maintenance guy holding up a piece of sticky tape and saying to his buddy "yeah, that should do the trick". At this stage people in the plane are surely wondering what exactly was wrong and are wrestling with the internal conflict between "I wish they would tell me what exactly is wrong" and "I'd rather not know".

We taxi again, we wait and wait some more for a slot to allow us to take off and then we're airborne. Only this time we're in the air about 25 minutes when the captain's voice comes over the PA system to say "folks it looks like the technical problem has occurred again - we're going to have to return to have it looked at". So we don't carry on, we go back.

Now nobody is saying anything but some people are definitely worried. Is this a slight problem or a serious problem? Will we be able to land? Needless to say the fact that you're reading this means that we landed OK and I made it eventually to my destination in the UK.

Times like these allow us to glimpse once again how vulnerable we really are when it comes to chance. Up at 31,000 feet and cruising at 500 miles per hour in a 300 ton metal box, the words "slight technical fault" are about as welcome as "forgot to pressurise the cabin" or "one of the engines is hanging off". Somehow we cope and we know that what will be will be - irrespective of what we do.