GADLING TAKE 5: Week of 3-21-2008

by Catherine Bodry on

Did you have a happy St. Patrick’s Day? While I didn’t get in to any shenanigans (for once, it seems), I was able to have a few pints with friends up in Anchorage. Though they weren’t perfectly-poured Guinnesses, they were locally brewed and likely tasted as good as Guinness in Ireland tastes. But there’s plenty of non-St. Paddy’s Day news this week at Gadling:

And here are some more fun posts to set your weekend off right: Aaron’s post on headlines from North Korea still makes me laugh; I’m curiously following the fate of squat toilets in Beijing (because I love squat toilets and think everyone should try them — I know, I’m a freak); and an Australian put his entire life on eBay.

Company patents electrical shock device to be used for aviation security

by Anna Brones on

As an airline passenger, there are many things that you can’t take aboard. Water bottles, lacrosse sticks, snow globes… the list goes on. But what if, despite all of the measures taken by the Transportation Security Administration, someone still manages to cause some havoc on a plane?

Lampered, a firearm training system, has patented a bracelet that delivers shocks when activated. What does the company see as the ideal use for such a bracelet? Aviation safety. Lampered proposes that the TSA require every passenger to wear one of the bracelets, and as soon as any safety related problems arise in-flight, flight-attendants can give a disabling electrical shock to a suspect passenger.

Somehow I can’t keep images of large herds of sheep, all with collars to keep them from going past the electrical fence, out of my head. Oh the advances in security.

[Via Boing Boing]

The $50 Paypal rebate on Northwest is back

by Grant Martin on

Earlier last year I posted an article about a new promotion between Northwest Airlines and Paypal, where if you pay for your ticket with Paypal you get a 50$ rebate after a few weeks. It worked pretty well, I flew a couple of routes and I got my money back long ago.

It looks like they’re running the promo again, maybe to stir up more interest in Paypal’s payment engine. The promo website says that you must book before March 27th and fly between April 1 and June 14. Easy enough.

And now some words for all of you afraid to use Paypal: It’s not that difficult. You don’t need to sign up for any crazy service (imagine my arms waving wildly in the sky), jump through any hoops or sell your soul to the devil. At the end of the booking process, you select Paypal as an option, click through a few links and drop your credit card number in. The rebate will be stored in an online account which you can directly deposit into your personal bank account or have sent to you in a check.

Still concerned? Let me know. I’ll book your ticket using Paypal, send you a check for twenty bucks and spend the other thirty dollars on sandwiches. Delicious, delicious sandwiches.

Do children on planes bother you?

by Grant Martin on

I have to admit, every time I used to fly overseas I was afraid of sitting in the proximity of children. Usually I’m one of the first people to board, so after getting my electronics and reading material in order, I used to nervously watch passengers boarding, terrified that a couple with a newborn child was going to sit next to me and that the child would wail across the entire ocean.

This has happened to me more than once, and it really really sucks. But over the past few years I’ve come to terms with the frustration a bit. I try to think that couples traveling with children need to be on the road, perhaps for a family function or emergency and that they’re doing everything in their power to see to their children. Hopefully, they’re sensitive to the passengers around them and we in turn can be flexible for that.

As it turns out, I’m not the only person sensitive to screaming kids in my cabin. Our friends over at Airfarewatchdog recently posted a survey asking whether families with children should be put in a different section of the aircraft, concentrating the ruckus into one portion of the plane. Perhaps this would result in more peace for the other passengers.

Surprisingly, well over 90% of the polled readers said that they would support another cabin for families with children. That’s a pretty definitive result.

Not that something like that will ever happen. Airlines wont discriminate against families traveling with children and even if they could, it would be a political and bureaucratic nightmare to implement. But it’s in interesting idea.

Be sure to check out and vote in AFWD’s and check out the data yourself.

Delta Airlines cuts jobs; who’s to blame?

by Grant Martin on

Atlanta based Delta Airlines announced Tuesday that they were cutting 2,000 jobs, their second cutback in six months. Citing rising fuel costs, the airline also says that it will cut back capacity and park 45 airplanes.

As the airline despondently pointed out, fuel prices have risen 20% in the last three months while market prices and competition have stayed tight. Under those conditions, how can an airline not be forced to cut back?

The problem, as a function of the egregious gouging by oil companies, is that airline prices have not appreciated correctly with crude and inflation. Increased internal competition and external pressures from passengers to produce the cheapest fares possible have forced carriers to underbid one another to the point of taking losses on many of their flights while operating costs skyrocket. Sure, airlines could enact a unilateral increase in fares across the country, but then some carriers (those perhaps, who locked in their oil prices years ago) could unfairly take advantage of the market.

Besides, are we as Americans going to stand by while airline prices assume their normal level? I guarantee you congress and passengers would be in an uproar and we would have three particular senators crying murder.

But until something drastic happens, we’re bound to ride the imploding American skies. Bankruptcies will continue, mergers will haunt our shareholders and the unions will continue to battle management over labor costs. We’ll blame a CEO for taking a million dollar bonus and politicians will form committees against the backdrop of your favorite airline stock inching closer to the floor. Through it all, the oil companies will step back and let us fight amongst ourselves, and as we slowly work our way towards collapse they’ll silently take our money — and laugh themselves all of the way to the bank.