Do you love your colleagues, or would you be happy to see them burn to death? To help you solve this riddle, British Airways is offering the opportunity to experience a simulated "emergency" at its flight training centre near Heathrow. It is the latest exercise in company team bonding, a phrase that always makes me think of a row of executives stuck together with gaffer tape. You can already build a golf course, investigate a crime scene or write and record your own song called I Love My Job.

Now you can fantasise about your colleagues dying in an air crash, in 3D Technicolor, and call it camaraderie.

I have always wanted to be in a plane crash, and survive. I crave dangerous situations as others crave porridge. And so I arrive at 8am with my passport and a copy of my will. Eventually, I am directed into a classroom. I walk in, and I see that it contains 29 British Petroleum executives. I stare at the British Petroleum executives. They stare at me. Is this bonding? They look very normal. They look abnormally normal. They are drinking coffee and listening to a man called Andy Clubb.

Andy is slim and blondish. He reminds me of Alan Partridge, but without the media career. He was a member of the BA cabin crew for 20 years, he says, and he bounces around, doing a sub-Ken Dodd comedy routine, teasing the BP executives by pretending he thinks that they are from Shell. The BP executives giggle politely, and in an organised manner. They are bonding already, over the Shell joke. Andy gives them the thumbs up. I stare at the wall. There is safety equipment there. There is an inflatable baby life cot. There is also an axe.

Our first task is to jump down an evacuation slide. Andy wants to know if anyone has been evacuated from a plane before. The BP executives look stunned. Only the Guardian's photographer raises his hand. So Andy plays a video of the correct way to jump down an evacuation slide. You step off, with your hands across your chest, like Dracula, and lean forward, and whizz down the evacuation slide. Saved. Easy.

So the BP executives and I form a crocodile and progress through empty passages to the evacuation slide. The executives say things like, "Did you come far?" and "I set my alarm for 7am."

Eventually, many corridors later, we enter a huge void of a room. Shining aeroplane parts are lying everywhere. Andy says that BA pilots do their flight simulations here, where they get to say, "My engine has exploded and I am telling you all about it in a very flat monotone."

Andy then produces an enormous white babygrow, and tells me to put it on. What is this? If I am dressed like this, I am not sure I even want to survive. "It is to protect you and the slide," says Andy. Are you saying I might break the slide?

It is not just me. A BP executive cracks open, and expresses a genuine emotion. "I look like an Oompa-Loompa," she says. "I don't want to damage my manicure," says another.

But the evacuation slide is already inflated. It looks like a big grey tongue. We climb up the ladder to jump on. The BP men go first. They look very self-consciously unafraid, as men tend to do when they are showing off. They jump off, and whizz down, and bounce up off the mat looking pleased with themselves.

Then they take out their cameras and take pictures of their colleagues. It's like The Firm - they can never leave BP now. Try to defect to Shell, and a photograph of you wearing a babygrow will be faxed over to the enemy. Is that team bonding? Or is it blackmail? And it's my go. Weeeeeeeeee. I live!

Andy explains that no aeroplane can be sold if it takes longer than 90 seconds to evacuate. So there will be no faffing around taking pictures. The crew, if necessary, will throw you off the slide.

To demonstrate this, Andy shows us a video of a test evacuation that failed. There is a huge pile-up of bodies at the bottom of the slide, and people seem to be groaning in pain. "Hmmm," mutter the BP executives. "That's not good." Then we see a video of a successful test evacuation off the new Airbus. These evacuees jump, one after the other, eyes front, not blinking, bouncing off at the bottom like a splice between a beach ball and a commando. They evacuate more than 800 people off eight slides in 74 seconds. "Wow," mutter the BP executives. "Volume."

And then it's show time - time for our simulated air crash. We head into a fake aeroplane cabin. It looks just like a normal aeroplane cabin, except that if you look outside, you can't see Hounslow. The cabin is business class, thank God - I would hate to die in economy. We all sit down, politely making way for each other, the way you never do on a real flight. On a real flight it is all hate stares and people taking 3,000 hours to stow a bag and SIT DOWN.

Andy has disappeared. Now a woman called Jenny is in charge. Jenny is small and blonde - she looks slightly like Leslie Ash, but less mad. This is the thing about BA employees, and BP employees, and perhaps the employees of any other company with an acronym that begins with B. They look so sane, so committed, so dependable. Perhaps this is why the BP people are here - to learn that they cannot control everything in this world, and will thus sleep better. "Are you having fun?" I ask one. "Yes," he says, and goes quiet. And I think: I may die in a plane crash with you, BP executive. Yours will be the last face I will ever see. Please may I have a polysyllable?

Jenny explains we will do "the emergency", and debrief later. It is an exam for which you are not allowed to revise, which I suspect is causing the BP souls of the BP executives to collapse in horror. They look a bit nervous. I am in the front row, near the exit, so I will not have to punch my way through too many BP executives, for authenticity, as I escape. We look at each other. Could this be the end? Then a recorded voice - I think it is Andy's - booms round the cabin: "We are taxiing to the end of the runway and joining the queue and then we will be on our way. We hope you will enjoy the flight."

And it begins. Pale white smoke begins to ooze from the left-hand side of the cabin, as if the Phantom of the Opera is rising from the hold. So it's a fire. I hoped it would be terrorists. There is a story about a Jewish wedding where the best man paid some actors to dress up as terrorists and run in with balaclavas and water pistols. There were three heart attacks and one death. But it's smoke. Andy said the smoke would smell of vanilla - in case we thought it was real smoke - and it does. I am inside a Marks & Spencers' vanilla sponge pudding.

We all stare at the vanilla-scented smoke. What should we do? Once, Andy told us, a participant ripped out an over-the-wing exit. But we are not doing anything, the BP people and I. We just sit there, politely, waiting to be rescued, like total idiots. No one wants to jump up and do anything interesting, or heroic. We are bonded by our shared middle-class terror of looking weird.

We all know that Andy won't let the BP executives die, although he could probably afford to lose the journalist.

Also - and this is very disappointing - I realise that the cabin is not moving. I was expecting it to lurch around, so that we could tumble on and off each other's laps.

Then the lights go out and Jenny changes. She becomes a screaming banshee in a BA cabin crew costume. She starts shouting, "Brace! Brace! Brace! Brace!" She is very aggressive; I didn't know BA cabin crew could be aggressive. Passive-aggressive yes, but not aggressive-aggressive. "Brace! Brace! Brace! Brace!" I sense she will not stop unless I obey her.

I stick my head between my knees and vow only to travel by donkey in future.

Jenny is shouting something else now. It is "Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!" So I get up and walk five steps out of the fake cabin and back into the simulator hall, where Andy is waiting with a double thumbs up. "Amazing," says a BP executive. "Epic," says another. They look happy. They look like they have had a tiny shot of adrenaline, and will live on the memory for the next 3,000 years.

We return to the classroom to discuss the experience. Except no one really has anything to say. This is a world of coffee cups and monosyllables. So we listen to Andy telling us how to survive a hotel fire. One executive tells me they are not here to bond, not at all. Is he in denial about the babygrow costume? Their bosses want them to maximise their chances of surviving a plane crash, he says. Something that no employer has ever done for me. Until now.