“Alice, you did GCSE Spanish,” said Lucy. Her efficiency was impressive, she’d stuck on a bit of toast for the co-pilot, was replacing toilet paper regularly, we’d all had water. “If anyone can understand Spanish,” she said, “can you make yourself known, raise your hand?”. Pamela tried a slightly different approach. I certainly wasn’t reassured by the need for a translator on the flight deck. Nervous flyers try not to think about system restarts when they are in a metal tube up in the sky. He’d explained we’d have to wait for the experts to get underneath and install a new computer.

Not everyone is willing to take questions. “If anyone has any questions, I’m happy to answer them”.

“You wouldn’t want to fly on a broken plane,” he said.

He had a slight mid-Ulster brogue, didn’t mess about with his words, apologised for the delay. There was a technical fault, the captain said. We’d taxied to the runway, already one hour behind schedule, then quickly returned to the stand. There were currently two engineers and two pilots squashed into the cockpit.

It was a request from Pamela, the cabin manager to two hundred people via the tannoy.

Months in spanish google translate