I have to admit, as a person with a fear of flying, that I was nervous before embarking on ‘Flight’, based in a shipping container on the plaza outside the Pleasance Dome and designed and run by immersive experience creators ‘DARKFIELD’. Other reviews talk about how terrifying this is, how they had to take time to recover afterwards, and imploring others to see this apparently unmissable experience.

The premise of it is strong: in an uncanny replica of an aeroplane, inside a shipping container, the audience is plunged into darkness and, through binaural headphones, experiences a plane crash. Schrodinger is used as a framing device – the famous ‘cat in a box’ theory employed in a bid, I think, to make the experience seem deeper than it really is. The experience claims to explore the idea of ‘the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics’. In other words, there are worlds where the plane lands safely, and worlds where it does not.

The set up is also strong: a glitching ‘safety briefing’ sets up the idea of the ‘multiverse’, if you will, and then the experience starts for real. This is where things go rapidly downhill. It is a dull 20 minutes. As my friend so eloquently put it: ‘there was two minutes of plane crash, and 15 of handing out peanuts.’ The bulk of the narrative appears to follow an air hostess handing out warm drinks (she reports that the ice machine is broken at least twice), and a pilot who can’t seem to turn off the tannoy system in the cabin. The actual plane crash – which happens during a thunderstorm – is brief and actually quite uneventful narratively (just the sound of screeching metal, and screaming passengers), before the plane then lands safely, dawn breaks and the passengers disembark, wondering what all the fuss was about. Still – a good opportunity for a sit down in a darkened room on a busy day.

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