Nigeria Suspended From Commonwealth For Blatant Attempt To Hijack News

The disloyal African state of Nigeria has had its membership of the Commonwealth suspended, after shamelessly trying to elbow its way into news coverage of the Jubilee with not one, but two fatal air accidents in a single day.

Just ignore them

The first shocking gatecrash – in which an ancient Boeing 727 freighter arriving from Nigeria overshot the runway in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, crushing ten bus passengers who were as black as the ace of spades – disgracefully stole a full thirty seconds of Her Majesty’s rightful airtime.

But worse was to follow.

Not satisfied with their first attempt to ruin the Queen’s day, at least 150 egocentric Nigerians chose to die selfishly when a passenger flight from Abuja to Lagos terminated in a flagrant attention-seeking explosion on top of a printing works .

“This was not the scheduled point of arrival,” observed a disdainful Foreign Office spokesman. “The inescapable conclusion is that these insignificant coloured persons felt an entirely unjustified sense of entitlement to five minutes of fame.”

“Thankfully, the media saw fit to grant them just two,” he added, “But how is that supposed to make the Queen feel?”

Cameron Slated For Flying Dinner Guests To Japan On Non-British Plane

The jet-setting prime minister is facing mounting anger today for not using a British airline to take his friends to dinner in Japan.

Your return flight has been booked, prime minister

David Cameron rode into a storm of criticism as he flew out - along with representatives of 35 British businesses – on a chartered Angolan jet, hoping to put a little Japanese trade their way as a thank-you for their generous party donations.

“We’re bloody furious,” said a spokesman for the British air-travel industry. “All those brown envelopes our members have handed to Peter Cruddas seem to count for nothing. Sure, the pudding was exquisite, but we want a refund.”

The airlines were not mollified by Mr Cameron’s desperate announcement of closer ties between Britain and Japan’s defence industries.

“For fuck’s sake, Cameron, British Aerospace is an arms manufacturer, not an airline,” commented a spokesman for British Airways. “Pull your bloody finger out, or from now on you’ll be flying third-world class until one of the wings falls off.”

Britain Diagnosed With Hollywood-Induced Quixotism

Psychologists say Britain’s unhealthy obsession with blockbuster movies has tragically developed into full-blown quixotism, the mental illness in which the commonplace seems fantastic, after the entire population decided that a meteor burning up in the atmosphere could not possibly be anything but a crashing - and probably snake-infested - airliner, full of screaming victims desperately texting their heart-rending final words to their loved ones.

No

“Millions of meteors fall into our atmosphere every day,” sighed Dr Maria Strangelove as she prepared the papers for Britain to be committed, “Whereas, in a typical year, about 150 commercial aircraft fall out of it. Now, which do you think you’re more likely to witness?”

With therapy, say experts, Britain may one day recover some sense of proportion – although they warn that this will take some time as, even once it accepts that what it saw was just a rock, the nation will then have to overcome the tragic delusion that only the heroic intervention of Bruce Willis narrowly saved the human race from total extinction.

World Stops Turning For Uncle Stephen Diversion Tragedy

All over the world today, work came to a standstill and streets emptied as billions focused their total attention on Twitter to hear the latest desperate news of the unfolding air-travel disaster crisis affecting their poor old Uncle Stephen Fry.

The universally-revered renaissance man, wit, raconteur, panel game host and bottom connoisseur’s ordeal began in Sydney, where he unsuspectingly boarded a doomed Qantas A380 Airbus. Halfway from its scheduled fateful stopover in Singapore on the way to the UK, however, disaster struck as one of the enormous flying deathtrap’s engines suddenly shut down horrifically – forcing the hapless pilot to make a life-or-death consultation of the manual about whether to land at Dubai or risk flying on safely on just three engines.

Really? How incredibly interesting

Tweeting frantically from his first-class seat via his faithful iPad, the terrified polymath heroically issued a frantic battery of updates on his unfolding ordeal to a shocked world. “Bugger,” he tweeted mellifluously, as he revealed his awful plight. “Forced to land in Dubai. An engine has decided not to play.”

With humanity now fully alerted to the crisis, thanks to his BBC employers clearing the schedules for non-stop coverage, a collective gasp echoed around the globe at his next desperate but exquisitely-worded communication: “My flight. Still on board. Not sure of [sic] we'll be bussed to the airport lounges or kept aboard while they work on it. Mnaah.”

As tragedy upon tragedy unfolded on the tarmac in Dubai, the undisputed master of verbal dexterity wailed plaintively: “Oh Jesus arsemothering fuck. I've left my wallet on the sodding plane. Hell's teeth this really isn't my day… I'm going to be siting [sic] here for ever and ever and ever… That's it. I'm fucked. Seriously fucked… It's at times like this a man considers taking up smoking again. Possibly with heroin, crack and MDMA mixed in & all washed down with vodka… Hurrah! I seem to have made Gulf News.”

Uncle Stephen’s appalling ordeal was finally ended five hours ago when panicking Qantas officials finally realised who he was, and decided his unendurable distress was sufficiently interesting to transfer him to an Emirates flight to London - where teams of trauma counsellors are waiting to help him as he tentatively attempts to pick up the tattered threads of his brutally shattered life.

Ethical Consumers’ Travel Plans Now Totally Screwed

With the RAF taking delivery of its first Airbus A330 Voyager tanker and troop transport, ethical purchasers are now totally fucked as far as their holidays are concerned.

Yeah, dream on, flyboy - it's just a big tube with wings

“OMG there must be an airliner somewhere that isn’t made by an arms manufacturer,” sighed an aghast Starchild Moonflower - whose real name is Sue - to her Facebook commune. “Airbus, Boeing, British Aerospace, Bombardier – well, that goes without saying – fuck it, even the bloody Brazilian one’s part and parcel of the murdering military-industrial complex!”

“What about Aeroflot? Tupolev… Antonov… I might have known,” she continued. “Sorry, kids, looks like it’s a sodding Margate caravan park for the rest of your childhood.”

Meanwhile, aviation experts are placing bets on what the RAF will call the long-delayed A400M troop transport, if Airbus can ever get the damned thing to work. The bookies’ choice is currently ‘Tardis’ at 3-2, with ‘Millennium Falcon’ the second favourite at 3-1, ‘Eagle Transporter’ at 6-1 and ‘Noddy Car’ a long shot at 33-1.

Nation Praying For Snow To Keep Osborne Away

No, please, take your time

Britons stopped complaining about the sub-Arctic weather today and began praying for more snow to fall, as long as it keeps chancellor George Osborne stranded in the United States indefinitely.

“I will gladly kip down on the floor of Terminal 2 for months to come, if it keeps that smarmy, bum-faced shit three thousand miles away,” grinned haggard would-be winter holidaymaker Sue Hart, who has spent two days stranded at Heathrow while airport workers wait patiently for God to show them how to spray antifreeze and bulldoze snow off runways. “There’s only so much harm the irritating little tit can get up to in a teleconference.”

Mr Osborne has already missed a vital meeting with top bankers in London today, in which they would have told him that enormous bonuses were vital to keeping their inestimable skill and expertise in the country, and he would have agreed with them completely but asked them to keep jolly quiet about it until he could sneak a low-key press release under the radar on a suitably busy news day.

BA Kindly Waives Fuel Surcharge Increase For Most Wasteful Flights

The world’s favourite airline to hate, British Airways, announced today that its long-suffering long-haul passengers will have an extra £10 per flight extracted from their threadbare wallets, in order to subsidise people who are too bloody impatient to travel short distances by road, rail or sea.

Coming soon to the Reading-Heathrow bus link

“Yes, of course most of the fuel is burnt up hauling a hulking great lump of metal up into the stratosphere,” admitted a smiling BA spokescreep, when questioned about the illogical decision. “Once it’s up there and bowling merrily along at 500mph, those enormous turbofans can just tick over on low revs for hours on end - which is why you can fly all the way to Florida and back for just £350, albeit not with us.”

“On your typical British domestic route, however, no sooner have you got up to 40,000ft than it’s time to come back down again,” he pointed out, after sneezing into a £50 note and casually dropping it into a shredder. “Short-haul commercial flying represents the least efficient form of mass transit that mankind has ever devised, unless perhaps somebody, somewhere is trundling about on a bus whose rear axle is driven from a reduction gear attached to the convection fan of a log-effect electric fire.”

“What you must bear in mind,” he explained, “Is that if ticket prices actually bore any relation to fuel usage, a lot of very impatient people could come to the reluctant conclusion that putting up with a couple of hours aboard one of Beardy Branson’s ghastly cattle trucks probably wouldn’t kill them after all.”

Flying Now Clearly More Dangerous Than Taking A Bath, Moan Credulous

With two fatal air crashes today following hard on the heels of the exploding engine of a Qantas A380, the credulous are now absolutely convinced that boarding a passenger flight will lead to certain death, according to rubbish cluttering up the internet.

Today’s accidents in Cuba and Pakistan, which killed all 89 passengers and crew of the two aircraft – have now officially pushed the aviation death rate above bath-related slippage, inappropriate microwaving mishap and crushing by runaway hovercraft.

“WTF whats hapnd 2 gravety ppl??!!!” commented one concerned YouTube troll, speaking for many to whom the word ‘coincidence’ is as impossible to spell as it is to comprehend. “mutha earth (GAEIAIEA) is ANGERY we got 2 stop poluteing the sky’s with CON-trails NOW!!!”

Was Gaia acting on secret instructions from the Bilderberg Group?

Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists were utterly convinced that the crashes were the tragic result of terrorists or the CIA, which for many of them are, of course, one and the same thing.

“No doubt this has been reported in the Bilderberg/illuminati media CON-glomerate as ‘al quaida’ at work AGAIN,” posted a man who, oblivious to the fact that it hasn’t, has worked the whole thing out in his head with a little help from David Icke. “Planes will keep crashing until the federal ZIONIST ‘authorities’ stop persecuting the innocent Randy Quaida, who is seeking asylum in CANADA because he accidentally stumbled upon the TRUTH about Big Pharma.”

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the aviation industry mildly pointed out that, statistically, flying is still safer than attempting to negotiate a flight of stairs, but was promptly told to “fuck off” several hundred times in the ensuing flurry of fact-proof raving.

Fast-Acting Tories Save World From Fearsome Outbreak Of Suicide Bombers Armed With Exploding Printer Accessories

From now on, it's tough tits if your printer runs out halfway across the Atlantic

Resolute home secretary Theresa May emerged from a top-level COBRA security meeting today to announce that the safety of the skies of the world was now assured, thanks to an immediate ban on passengers flying from UK airports with a cumbersome toner cartridge crammed into their hand luggage.

She added that the lethal office consumables would also be banned from cargo compartments and airfreight flights unless they originated from a reputable shipper, such as UPS, or had a combined weight of casing plus explosive of less than 500g.

Meanwhile, the prime minister told MPs after the meeting that it really was about time the world woke up and did something about terrorism.

“It is clear we must take every possible step to work with our partners in the Arab world to cut out the terrorist cancer that lurks in the Arabian peninsula," said Mr Cameron, although he skilfully refused to be drawn on whether ‘cutting out terrorist cancer’ might possibly involve a bloody invasion and fruitless ten-year occupation of Yemen.

Airlines, however, have reacted with dismay to the prospect of yet another layer of intrusive pestering of their customers.

"What happens, particularly in the coverage of the Yemeni issues of recent days, is that we have another huge lurch by the ‘securicrats’ into making travel even more uncomfortable and an even more tedious ordeal for the travelling public," warned Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary.

“That’s my job,” he asserted indignantly, revealing that he was in talks with Boeing about strengthening the cabin roofs of his 737 fleet to allow the suspension of his cheapskate passengers by their thumbs for the hellish duration of their flights.

Obliging Yemeni Terrorists Provide Timely Excuse For Keeping Airport Security Checks

A terror cell of operatives working for al-Qaeda or something have kindly given Western governments a spurious argument against airlines who want to see an end to excessive US-style passenger security checks, by obligingly sticking some inert plastic explosives inside a couple of toner cartridges, sellotaping a few wires to them and posting them airfreight to America labelled ‘BOMB - HANDLE WITH CARE’ .

One of the curiously inept bombs was miraculously discovered on a UPS cargo plane during a stopover at East Midlands Airport, while the other was fortuitously intercepted in Dubai.

“We have yet to determine whether the package we found is a viable explosive device,” announced home secretary Theresa May this morning. “We’ve tried dropping it a few times, but so far it hasn’t gone off. Next we’ll try sticking 240 volts through it, and if that fails we’ll give it a minute or two with a blowtorch. That ought to do it.”

Long-suffering passengers, meanwhile, are already pointing out to singularly unimpressed security officials that even if they were all subjected to vivisection during check-in, it wouldn’t exactly be an effective deterrent to a terrorist putting an airmail bomb in a postbox somewhere in the Middle East.

“I’m afraid such cavalier attitudes to security are missing the point,” responded Mrs May huffily. “The important thing is that if people start thinking too much about things like this, then the terrorists win.”

A dedicated suicide bomber could easily cram one of these up his arse, say experts

Meanwhile, the Yemeni government has promised a full investigation into the matter, right after it finds some way of establishing its authority beyond the walls of the parliament building.

Hopes Fade For American Survivors In Rubble Of Europe

Still want that Rhodes scholarship, buddy?

A White House spokesman for the US tourist industry solemnly informed reporters that there was little chance of finding any Americans still alive in the shattered wreckage of Europe.

The crisis began this morning, when the Florida Commission on Tourism flashed a text warning to all US passport holders in Europe to “Act natural, but when I say run - you run. RUN!”

A few seconds later, the California Travel & Tourism Commission tweeted them with: “Get the fuck outta there! The whole goddam continent’s gonna blow!”

Then, seconds after the Yellowstone National Park Rangers posted “Save yo’ ass, mofos!!!” to Facebookers in the Old World, Europe exploded.

“The last communication received prior to the European disaster was a desperate message from the British saying, ‘Yes, perhaps France and Germany might seem a trifle iffy,’ then all the lines suddenly went dead,” explained the spokesman. “Satellite images we’ve analysed subsequent to the incident clearly indicate two crazed Islamists trying to cram a 500-megaton thermonuclear warhead onto a crowded bus in Prague, slap bang in the centre of Europe, just a split-second before one God-almighty bang.”

Orbital scans reveal absolutely no signs of life in the desolate thousand-mile-wide crater, which is rapidly filling up with magma, he added - pointing out that a travel advisory warning would be in place for the next ten thousand years.

“No point fretting, though, folks,” he concluded brightly. “Still plenty of things to see and do in the good ol’ U.S. of A.”

Volcano Threatened With Injunction

British Airways has asked the High Court to grant an injunction against Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which is once again threatening to bring misery to the airline’s balance sheet.

“We have been in negotiations with the volcano before, and it’s got us nowhere,” said BA chief executive Willie Walsh. “It just keeps repeating the same old ash again and again. If the volcano won’t listen to reason, we’ll see how it likes a high court injunction.”

Meanwhile, members of Unite - the cabin crews’ union - are up in the air yet again. Dense clouds of hot air are spewing out all over the place, and are likely to cause chaos for months to come.

War With Ryanair Looms After Humiliating Climbdown

Screaming mad Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has escalated the war of words with Europe after he was forced to pay reparations to his wretched passengers, overturning his earlier pledge to treat them like cattle as usual.

O'Leary had earlier vowed to repay his stranded victims nothing more than their original airfare, instead of the full reparations demanded by European airline regulations. He is now paying the expenses they incurred while stranded by the Icelandic ash plume, claiming that his earlier statement was "a mistake".

The crazed executive - who is known for his bizarre, ranting outbursts and his irrational desire to make his much-maligned passengers pay for everything he possibly can think of - also vowed to fight what he called the "absurd and discriminatory EU 261 regulations".

O'Leary's vaunted air force consists of 202 Boeing 737-800 aircraft, each with sufficient range to threaten many of Europe's leading cities.

A spokesman for Boeing pointed out that the 737 is a passenger aircraft, and is designed purely for peaceful purposes. However, aviation industry experts pointed out that Hitler said exactly the same about the Heinkel He111, but that didn't stop it from bombing London in 1940.

Moaning Passengers Glad To Be Reunited With Moaning Families

The same emotional scenes were being played out at airports all over the UK today, as the first flights began to disgorge their grumpy cargo of moaning British passengers into the folded arms of their moaning families.

"Typical bloody government," moaned typical returnee Rob Blind. "There was never any bloody danger from a little bit of bloody ash. I'm a bloody expert at risk assessment - all this time I could have been back at my desk at the bank trading futures. I offered the girl at the check-in the benefit of my expert opinion, but did she bloody put me in touch with her bloody bosses?"

"And I missed the bloody national lottery on Saturday," he moaned. "Don't bloody tell me I saved ten quid, that's ten good chances of winning bloody millions that I'll never get back."

Meanwhile, Britain's airlines have been moaning about the Europe-wide travel ban which has only now been lifted.

"We bloody said all along there was no bloody danger at all," moaned a spokesman for British Airways. "Have you seen the size of a bloody turbofan? How can something that bloody huge be affected by a little bit of bloody fag ash? It's bloody ridiculous. We'd gladly have chanced it, I bloody swear. Bloody EU, bloody governments, bloody Gordon Brown for following the bloody silly advice from the bloody International Civil Aviation Organisation. Remember that before you bloody start on us about compensation."

"I'm just bloody glad my husband's back in one bloody piece," moaned Mrs Penelope Blind. "Now perhaps he can bloody explain why he was on telly yesterday with his arm round his bloody secretary in the Canaries, when he told me he was going to a bloody banking conference in bloody Dusseldorf."

Meanwhile, holiday resorts are still waving goodbye to thousands of moaning Britons who are ill-temperedly queueing to get into departure lounges.

"Of course, we love our dear British friends and the hilarious jokes they told about overcharging while they were drinking the bar dry," said a haggard Spanish barman, carefully removing his earplugs. "And we sincerely hope they come again. One day."

Send Royal Navy To Pick Us Up Now, Demand Wildly Optimistic Travellers

150,000 stranded British holidaymakers with quaint notions about the size of the Royal Navy today called on the government to send an imaginary fleet of warships to pick them up and bring them home, preferably with ensuite showers in every cabin.

"My girlfriend and I will be on the quayside at one o'clock sharp, bags packed and ready," snapped irate futures trader Rob Blind, who has been forced to soak up more sun and drink more cocktails in Goa by the evil Icelandic volcano plume. "Cabin for two with a balcony, please. Sort it."

Following a meeting of the COBRA emergency committee, in which it was pointed out that many of the stranded travellers are nice middle-class people who tend to vote in elections, the government later announced that it was sending its three largest warships - assault boat HMS Waterfeature and the pocket carriers HMS Dinghy Royal and HMS Little Britain - on a big circular tour of the world's top holiday destinations to collect all 150,000 ash victims, stack them eight-deep on the hangar decks and return them to their polling districts by 6 May at the latest.

"Travellers may experience a certain amount of discomfort," admitted navy spokesman Admiral Insurance, "Especially the ones who have to stand all the way on the flight deck."

Meanwhile, airlines are beginning to question the actual danger posed by the plume, after a British Airways 747 landed safely following a test flight through the ash cloud with chief executive Willie Walsh lashed to the tail fin, roaring defiance at the elements.

"If anybody was going to be hurled to earth and smashed to bloody chunks, whether you believe in God, karma or Mother Nature, then that person would surely be me," snarled the unharmed executive as flight attendants unstrapped him and gave him oxygen. "But behold, minions and trade unionists - I live!"

"Bloody hell," he added. "Give me some more of that oxygen, love."

Chronic Masturbators Inundate Manchester Airport With Speculative Job Applications

The Human Resources staff at Manchester Airport are inundated with emailed CVs and oddly-stained letters of application for the unadvertised post of X-Ray Scanner Operator, after the airport began trials of a revolutionary new device which allows security staff to look through passengers' clothes and check them for genitals.

"There is no way that images of naked people could possibly be considered pornographic," sniffed Sarah Barrett, the airport's head of customer humiliation. "The very suggestion disgusts me to the core. Anyway, it is a matter of public record that every single individual who works in the security sector is an unimpeachable paragon of virtue, and a churchwarden to boot. And of course, like all public-sector IT systems, the computer attached to the X-ray device is utterly secure. There is no way that anyone could, for example, simply plug in a USB stick and upload thousands of nude photos onto the internet."

"I seriously doubt that anyone in the world could be remotely interested in polluting their immortal soul by looking at the human body in all its revolting, shameful detail," she continued. "And besides, I know for a fact that the internet is rigorously policed by elderly spinsters who delete anything that offends their sensibilities as soon as it's posted. Now if you'll excuse me, I must go for a shower before the water heats up to room temperature."

At Terminal 2, where the system has recently been introduced, passengers can choose to have their intimate privacy violated by the device - which displays an image of their wallets, piercings, breast implants and privates - or, if they prefer, strip off completely and board their flights buck naked.

"Dear God, somebody help me tear my eyes out," begged a scanner operative, as another coachload of well-fed retirees waddled in for their winter flight to Spain.

UK Terror Threat Warning Reduced To Lower Case

The Home Office has reduced the terror threat level in the UK to "Aaargghh!!!" - the first time it has been changed since 2007, when it was raised to "AAARGGHH!!!".

"In the light of mounting evidence that the population of Britain has not, in fact, been blown to bits, a terror warning indicating the universal certainty of violent death is no longer considered to be appropriate," said Home Secretary Alan Johnson. "We have therefore downgraded the warning to a more realistic level. The government is happy to tell you that, thanks to the tireless work of the forces of law and order, you are all now only going to be horribly maimed."

"But we would still advise jumpy white bigots to let the police know whenever anybody with a beard moves into the neighbourhood," he added. "You can't be too careful."

Meanwhile, the government moved its Health Threat Warning up from "Eek!" to "OMIFUCKINGGOD!!!" as swine flu continued to rampage unchecked across the front pages of the red-top comics.

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have now installed vicious, unpredictable ED-209 robots at Heathrow to blast suspected swine-flu carriers to shreds, while the NHS swine flu website has finally gone online after a month-long delay - allowing the nation's panic-stricken medieval peasant throwbacks to email their constant demands for Tamiflu into the void of cyberspace, and providing welcome relief for hard-pressed doctors' surgeries.

"Thank Christ for that," said Dr Foster, a Gloucester-based GP. "If one more hysterical shithead bursts through my door demanding a crate of Tamiflu for their hay fever, there is a very real danger that I may finally lose my patience, punch their lights out, wrap the blood-pressure measuring cuff around their stupid skull and pump it up until their head implodes, so help me God."

Ryanair Boss Announces Latest Demented Plan To Make Passengers Pay Less, Suffer More

No-frills airline Ryanair is investigating the possibility of making passengers cling to the leading edge of the wings, after chief executive Michael O'Leary watched the Flight of the Phoenix on DVD last night.

"Our tight-fisted, penny-pinching passengers are scum of the worst kind, and if I had my way they wouldn't be allowed on our planes at all," hissed Mr O'Leary from his rubber-walled office. "But the bastards seem to think that peeling off a couple of fivers and giving them to me somehow entitles them to a flight."

Ryanair is said to be in discussions with Boeing about the possibility of screwing a job lot of B&Q drawer handles to the leading-edge slats of its fleet of airliners. However, a spokesman for the manufacturers pointed out that dozens of bodies flailing in the 450-knot slipstream would almost certainly have some disruptive effect on the airflow over the upper wing surface, leading to a catastrophic loss of lift and certain death for all aboard the aircraft.

"Perhaps Mr O'Leary ought to watch A Bridge Too Far instead," he suggested. "A stout cable attached to the tail of a 737-400 should be able to tow up to fifty passengers in a flimsy glider - or a hundred if they just wear roller skates and hang on for grim life."

"And if the plane encounters difficulties, the pilot can always cast off the tow rope," he added sagely.

Ryanair's long-suffering passengers said they were open to suggestions, as long as they were able to amuse themselves in the departure lounge by pushing Mr O'Leary's head down a toilet and banging the seat repeatedly against his neck until he stopped moving.

BA to Beat Recession With Slavery

Demonstrating an innovative approach to staff costs in the face of the ongoing recession, British Airways bosses have emailed the airline's 30,000-strong workforce with an invitation to enslave themselves voluntarily.

Staff are being urged to take anything from a week to a month - either as unpaid leave or, if they prefer, carrying out their usual duties for no pay.

"Dear colleague," goes the message, "You may have noticed the appalling losses we posted last month, which was due entirely to unforeseen factors beyond our control, such as cash-strapped corporate accounts departments becoming somewhat intolerant of their executives whooping it up in business class.

"In these challenging times, why not help British Airways return to profit by doing your job for NOTHING for a few weeks? Of course, you can opt to just sit on your arse, counting your toes, in return for no pay. But imagine the warm feeling you will experience as you dish out free champagne to our remaining fat-cat customers as they cash in their air miles, or when you're struggling with crosswinds as you try to avoid parking your crammed 737 in the sea at the end of Tenerife's notoriously short runway - knowing that YOU are doing your bit to give our suffering shareholders the dividends they deserve!

"We would like to reassure you that the generous donation of your labours will not go unnoticed later in the year, when we start dishing out the P45s."

Leading by example, chief executive Willie Walsh has kindly offered to work for nothing in July, hoping that the remaining £670,000 of his salary will somehow tide him over.

World Sheds A Tear For Poor British Airways

The world burst into floods of tears today at the news that British Airways, its former favourite airline, was reporting an annual loss of £401m.

The lovable, cuddly airline blamed its fall from profitability on the cost of fuel, the weak pound, the recession, Satan and moonspots.

"This dramatic reversal of fortunes is certainly nothing to do with our policy of shamelessly milking travellers with eye-watering fares turning round and biting us on the bum," said chief executive Willie Warmer, who also announced that he would be foregoing a month's pay in July. "I shall just have to hope that the remaining £673,750 of my salary will tide me over."

British Airways has traditionally relied on charging astounding prices for business travellers' jollies, safe in the knowledge that their company expense accounts would pay up without batting an eyelid. However, industry analysts pointed out that the airline had failed to notice that there were no longer any businesses left in Britain.

Meanwhile, the world promised BA a nice ice lolly if it would just shut up for five minutes.