But rather than mark the end of the low-cost flight boom that has transformed air travel for millions of people, it promises more good news for passengers. Only days after a third no-frills airlines went bust in the space of a few months, easyJet warned yesterday of a profits slump and saw its shares nosedive. He predicted that it would lead to a “ferocious bloodbath”.Ray Webster, chief executive of easyJet – shares in which fell by by 20 per cent after it reported poor trading for the first three months of 2004 – issued a warning that “unprofitable and unrealistic” pricing was threatening the industry.And the prospect of some carriers following Birmingham-based Duo, which collapsed at the weekend – leaving passengers stranded abroad and others without refunds for bookings – led to a call by the Association of British Travel Agents for all low-cost flights to be covered by the Air Travel Organisers Licensing Scheme (Atol), which insures consumers against such collapses. The authority has more than 400 staff, some of whom are paid to advise Mr Bowker on such matters.Gerry Steinberg, the Labour MP for the City of Durham and a member of the PAC, described the briefing session as “a scandalous waste of taxpayers’ money”. He said: “Did Richard Bowker really think he was going to get value for money from Steven Norris? As a former Tory transport minister and with the Jarvis connection, Norris is one of the people who got the industry into the mess it is in.”Bob Crow, the general secretary of the RMT rail union, said the authority spent huge sums of public money on consultants, but that this was “beyond the pale”.A spokeswoman for Mr Norris pointed out that the Tory politician was a senior partner in Park Place Communications, a consultancy specialising in transport and its impact on the environment..

The filmed “Phase 1″ has its Frankenstein moments, mad scientists at work on their creation. Johnston avoids B-movie extravagance, but he’s working on a much-used subject.Much-used in dance, too. There are plenty of doll ballets, and Johnston’s new “Phase 3″ has its share of Coppelia moments. The clones suggest the robot from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, C-3PO and the stormtroopers from Star Wars. It takes a while to list the different kinds of work Darren Johnston has put into his Silicon Sensorium. Besides dance, he uses film and animation, different kinds of projection, complex lighting and set design. The score was commissioned from the electronica artist Squarepusher.

You can’t miss Johnston’s multimedia ambition, and his collaborations are innovative. His picture of artificial life still needs more depth.
Silicon Sensorium is a trilogy, with the new third phase receiving its premiere in Laban’s handsome new theatre “Phase 1″ is entirely on film. The camera rushes down dark paths, and through some terrific industrial architecture, into a science laboratory. Squarepusher’s music is industrial, too – sparse beats, with wrenching mechanical noise phased in and out of the soundtrack.Mick McNicholas’s animations are superimposed over the screen. Grids and 3D maps outline the position of the scientists, blur and vanish Equations and mission statements come and go. The scientists are creepy, with heads bandaged and faces hidden behind moulded masks. As the film is edited, speeded and slowed, their movements become jerkily robotic.In “Phase 2″, we see the dancer Tim Morris as one of the new android clones.