Freakanomics Inspired Post

The culprit in question. J'accuse!!

The air here is crisp and clean. Maybe it is only a figment of my imagination but at this altitude the air does taste better.

It is currently 5:13am in Taipei. The onscreen monitor flares to life as I check it to get a more accurate reading for this blog post. I am high above the clouds at 36000 feet. At this altitude, the pressure outside would crush me instantaneously if I somehow managed past the airline secure locks.

I am currently traveling to Malaysia with my gf Izzy.

On this flight I finished a great book by Steven Dubner and Steven Levitt -  Freaknomics: When to Rob a Bank. This gave me the inspiration to write this blog post.

Have you  ever noticed the plugs on flights are two pronged?
Thanks for Freakanomics I am beginning to see and wonder about a lot of things in my everyday life. On this recent trip with EVA Air I noticed the supplied headphones are two pronged. I had originally brought my own headphones to the flight and used them. The normal one pronged headphones works perfectly well with their onboard entertainment system.

Why would they need to manufacture these two pronged plugs? I have two hypothesis:

1. This measure is used to prevent people from stealing the headphones. I am guessing the airline recycles these headphones (hopefully after sanitizing them first). I tried the headphones on my phone and since it can only make use of one of the prongs, the music only came out of one ear.

The headphones can only work on the plane, there is little incentive for people to take them when we land. This argument is further strengthened by the fact some airlines only offer earbuds which are only single prong. Their quality is worse than the ones I received here on EVA Air, which are nice foamy over the ear headphones with pretty good quality of sound and bass.

2. It is somehow cheaper to manufacture these two pronged headphones. Since most of the manufacturing is done in China where economy of scale is key. There must be more factories making single pronged headphones than these obscure two pronged ones, this argument is discounted.



How to Fly First Class while only paying for Economy

I have nothing but good things to say about EVA Air. Out of all the airlines I flew with this one takes the cake for the service, presentation and comfort. However alas on a 15 hour transpacific flight, we can all use some more leg room and more washrooms facilities.

So how exactly do you fly first class on an economy ticket? Pause here to think about this a bit before moving on. The answer is quite simple and you may have already hit upon it. But you protest: That’s not allowed or legal!

Let’s examine that for a second, oh wait before that lets state what exactly is the method. The short gist of it is to simply walk into first class and take up one of the seats.

Sounds too simple to be true? I may or may not have done this on this flight and many others before it.

After the cabin crew does their initial round of flight checks for tickets and drinks and food. The flight descends into a dark zone where all the reading lights are off. The only thing separating your economy section and the business / first class is one or two sets of curtains.

As with everything is life it only takes someone with the chutzpah to actually do it and enjoy the rewards ;)

If you protest about how this harms others, just carefully consider your argument first and any obvious counters. I certainly couldn’t think of the golden rule equivalent objection to this or any other logical argumentations.

“Rules were meant to be broken” – anonymous.

Peace from the first class section? ;)