Well, I’m off to São Paulo, Brazil in a few hours. I’m going for the You Sh0t the Sheriff hackmeeting/conference. Unfortunately, due to fire code/occupancy limitations, I probably won’t get to attend many of the presentations in person unless some people don’t show up. But I will get to meet a lot of interesting people, and I’ve been invited to the after-party, which will probably be more fun anyway.
If anyone has suggestions for a crash-course in Portuguese, let me know!
For reasons that make no sense to me, buying a one-way ticket from Santiago to São Paulo on LAN airlines costs almost 650 USD, but buying a round-trip ticket with a return leg on some random date in August cost only 400 USD.
One of my friends claims that this pricing has to do with market variation and flexibility: the airline is better off getting that August ticket sold now, since they don’t know what the airfare market will look like in August. I still say there’s something really screwy going on when two tickets cost less than one ticket.
Whatever the airfare market looks like in August, they’re not actually going to be paying people to sit on their planes, though, right? And LAN give away free food, so it’s not like they can do the Ryanair thing, making their money by turning up the aircon then charging 5 euros a pop for leprechaun’s doses of soda.
My guess is that if the plane has too few passengers, it will be too light to maintain its regular cruising height, and will float off into orbit. They NEED those passengers. As a trained scientist, I can assure LAN airlines that that is exactly what will happen, and encourage them to start employing me forthwith as human ballast. I will even undertake a strict regime of chocolate consumption to ensure I pull (gravitationally) my weight.