PHILADELPHIA, PA — With airlines charging for everything from a single piece of stored luggage to a can of soda to “extra” leg room, it was only a matter of time until one proposed weight-based fees for the privilege of flying. Readers of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News thought that day had finally arrived when they saw the ad from Derrie-Air. The one-day advertising campaign used both newspapers and the Philly.com website to promise passengers that they would pay-as-they-weigh. The heavier the passenger, the heftier the price; making it the ideal air carrier for runway models and anorexics, the bony asses of which most airline seats appear ideally designed to accommodate.
The ads cheerily informed environmentally conscious potential patrons that Derrie-Air is “the world’s only carbon-neutral luxury airline, where you don’t have to choose between living the high lift and saving the planet.”
In order to “reduce our carbon emissions or perish from the face of the earth,” the airline promised to not only “plant trees to offset every pound of carbon that our planes release into the atmosphere,” but offer “a kind of ‘Sliding Scale’ – the more you weigh, the more you’ll pay,” the ad explained. “After all, it takes more fuel – more energy – to get more weight from point A to point B. So we will charge passengers based on how much mass they add to the plane. The heavier you and your luggage are, the more trees we’ll plant to make up for the trouble of flying you from place to place.”
Alas for those excited enough by the advertisements – pro or con – to visit FlyDerrie-air.com, it was all in fun.
Philadelphia Media Holding, which owns both newspapers, had worked with Gyro ad agency to make a point about “the power of our brands in generating awareness and generating traffic for our advertisers – and put a smile on people’s faces,” as PMH representative Jay Devine explains it.
Although the company will not offer $1.40 per pound rates from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, it does intend to track traffic to the Derrie-Air site and pay special attention to its buzz in various online blogs.
