Please Board, Mr Sexy Pants

My little bro flew up for a visit the other day. It turned out to be quite an eventful trip.

For a start, he managed to wangle a free trip, which is always a bonus. A friend of his was coming up and said she had a spare ticket for whomever asked first. Nice one.

They get on the plane, and the guy next to them is doing scratchy tickets. I don't know if you have them where you are, but they're a form of lowkey gambling. It's a piece of card you buy from a gas station or corner shop that costs a couple of bucks. You randomly scratch off some elements, and there's a chance to win a money prize.

Anyway, this guy is doing these and suddenly he says "Oh wow, $20! That'll cover what I paid for them." Pretty obviously this happened because my brother was sitting right next to him — he's got to be a good luck charm, right?

The guy continues scratching away, then leans over and asks "This can't be right, can it?" Guess what? He won $100,000. Right there and then.

That's not the eventful bit of the trip. I'm just telling you that coz it's kinda cool. The eventful bit was about half way through the flight, when the head steward comes storming up the aisle and demands to see both of their boarding passes.

Here's my brother's:

I've, uhh, blacked out some of the more incriminating details

This may not come as much of a surprise at this point in the story, but the steward wasn't coming to offer them a complimentary hot towel for their wit and verve.

The staff on the plane gave them something of a bollocking (local slang: telling off, in this case while the staff standing behind you try not to giggle too loudly).

They were then met at the door by a police officer with rather a lot of pointed questions, although apparently he had the decency to be at least a little amused by it all.

I think my brother might have got away with it though. I reckon it was his friend that really pushed it over the edge.

Her boarding pass? Ms Pimpin' Bitch.

related

07/Dec/2011 | fun |
  • Anonymous

    I see the superficial fun in this but I also see the big picture down side.

    Imagine Ms Pimpin' Bitch and Mr Sexy Pants have boarded their plane in Christchurch which is bound for Wellington.  Just as their aircraft is taxiiing down the runway an earthquake of magnitude 6.2 strikes Christchurch, epicentre is 5km from the airport and at a depth of 5km.

    The airport is destroyed and the plane is swallowed up by the gaping gorges in the runway.  Nobody on board survives.  Who is USAR searching for?  How will Ms Pimpin' Bitch's friends and family know she is on the ill-fated aircraft unless she has revealed her pseudonym to them earlier?

    What is the expense of iteratively comparing DNA for a match?  What is the cost to loved ones who are missing a member of their team but neither they nor the airline are able to affirm that the team member was onboard the ill-fated flight? 

    Imagine if everyone onboard the aircraft that collided with the Twin Towers had used pseudonyms.  Three words, extreme, chaos, and despair.

    I am left wondering whether Jetstar undertook any ID checks as they are required to do.

    In short, do your friends and family a favour and travel under your own name (unless you have good reason not to and have informed all potentially affected parties of your pseudonym).  Also, fly with an airline that takes security seriously.

  • http://sidawson.org Si Dawson

    You make choices based on the possibility of events as statistically likely as the plane you just boarded flying into a hole in the ground opened by an earthquake that occurred right after boarding?

    Hang on, what am I saying? It's probably the exact same odds as winning $100k on scratchies!

    Damn! Gotta get me to a lotto outlet.

  • Anonymous

    100K is no use to a dead person nor will it be claimable by a person who is unable to verify that their beneficiary is on the plane in question. 

    Moreover, it's likely that the ticket in question will be tossed around in the chaos.  To whom does that ticket belong?

    Perhaps you have a fancy algorithm that suggests otherwise, but right now, as a frequent flyer, I prefer to avoid flights involving Chrischurch.  I also prefer to avoid airlines that are lax on security.

    24K people who have left the city since the first quake appear to share my fear/paranoia.

  • Anonymous

    So, what you're saying is that Chch is no more at risk of a force majeure than any other city in the world.  You say this despite the occurrance of a crippling earthquake in Sept 2010 which fortuitously saw no loss of life and then the Feb 2011 earthquake that sadly, saw >180 lives lost.  What was the probability of that event?

    If you have a magical prediction tool that will alert residents to the impending perils of loss never before experienced, please, bring it on.

  • http://jahangiri.us/news Holly Jahangiri

    Sounds like a great problem for a law school exam.