When I use this expression I mean that I have stopped doing what I was doing, regardless of how urgent it was, and had a tidying-up. The Flight of the Phoneix is a favourite movie of mine SPOILER COMING the first one being better than the re-make. They are stranded in the desert and rebuild a twin engined aircraft with a single engine as their only means of escape. The engine is the sort that is started up by inserting a cartridge into the cylinder head and driving the propeller round until it fires. There are only four cartridges. The grizzled old pilot with a career of drunkeness behind him, tries the first two cartridges and the engine stutters but does not pick up. He then announces that he will use the third cartridge with the ignition off to blow the fumes out of the cylinders. All the other surviviors go wild and accuse him of wasting the last but one cartridge. He is the pilot however and he decides. On the fourth cartridge, the engine fires and they escape. The sad thing is that the film pilot, very famous Paul Manson, is killed at that point. Anyway, when I do a Flight of the Phoenix it means that I drop everything and sort myself out. You can buy Flight of the Phoenix (the first one with James Stewart and Dickie Attenborough) here.