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We always knew that the lipstick, the food, the made-up uniforms were there to distract you from the obvious fact that you are hurtling through the air at several hundred miles per hour.

Even the laws of aerodynamics seem to have cooperated in the sham. Bernoulli’s very elegant principle was supposed to account for the miracle of mechanised flight. The truth, it turns out, is much messier.

The budget airlines feel safe because they don’t seem to be implicated in the lethal, glamorous bargain of normal flight.