April 21, 2005 | Roger Roger, Lighter Lighter

Airplanes are getting better mileage now, thanks to an odd tactic of forcing passengers to throw away fuel. Yes, its a paradox (an actually interesting paradox), but the government is now requiring all passengers to discard their personal lighters before boarding a commercial airliner.

According to Ken Kaye's story in Florida's Sun-Sentinel, airport screeners in three Florida airports confiscated over 1,000 lighters on April 15, the day the lighter ban went into effect.

Scores of smokers were caught by surprise as they arrived at South Florida's three major airports on Thursday and learned cigarette lighters were banned on board airliners.[...]

"I'm guessing I'm going to throw them out before I get on the plane," said businessman John Ray, as he prepared to fly from Palm Beach International Airport to Austin, Texas. "You think I can write off my lighters when I get home?"[...]

Although a traveler still may carry up to four books of matches, lighters are now forbidden in a person's pockets or carry-on items to prevent terrorists from easily igniting explosives on an airplane, the TSA said.

While the weight savings may seem minimal, think of the effect in the larger terms of the effect of 2.8 million passengers a day. In fact, little birdies tell me that the savings might actually rescue the beleagured industry and that industry analysts are already preparing to release buy recommendations on nearly all airline stocks.

(UPDATE: While their stocks will inevitably climb higher than a 747 at cruising altitude, pay no attention to the airline industry talk about using the fuel in the confiscated lighter to actually propel the plane and giving discounts to passenges based on the number of lighters they surrender. That's lighter-the-sky technology and such whispers are simply intended to to pump up stock prices to sub-orbital levels and to lure unsuspecting passengers into making planes even more lighter by bringing more than one lighter to the airport.)

Of course, that's ironic too, since this rule got a major boost from the supposedly anti-corporate agit-prop filmmaker Michael Moore, who prominently featured Senator Dick Durbin expounding on the evils of lighters in the classic Fahrenheit 9/11.

You might remember this as the segment either before or after the one decrying the lack of state police defending the coast of Oregon from boatloads of Islamic fundamentalists intent on destroying Nike factories.

(Please no one tell them that Nike moved all its factories overseas and that if you want to light a shoe-bomb, you might try doing that in the bathroom, so other passengers don't see you)

As you recall both segments were biting indictments of the Bush Administration's *snort* supposed *airquotes* homeland security efforts.

Anyhow, enough about Michael Moore.

Today, I'm giving away for free, for you my readers and for you Google hounds (Shoutout to Jerome from Duluth, GA), a free business idea.

Yes, its little known but I come up with hundreds of business ideas a day, and its only my lack of motivation and startup captial, that I'm not posting to my blog while sipping from a freshly split open coconut and lounging in a hammock from my own private Koh.

Anyhow, here's the idea. You "hire" an 8 year-old intern (find one at a charter school near you) to stand near the checkpoint and beg passengers to donate their soon to be confiscated lighters for a charity, African Abes, that ships the lighters to school children in the African bush so they will have light at night to study by.

Then at the exits of airports, you have some other iontern sell the lighters to nicotine starved pax for $1.00 a pop or $10 for a vintage Vietnam War zippo that some still-shell-shocked vet was forced to hand over before he could get on a plane to visit the VA hospital in D.C. for a double-blind study investigating whether massive does of Viagra can cure ex-grunts who wake up in the middle of the night yelling "Man down, Man down."

It's a brilliant business model indeed, and this is me letting you, my dear readers, know how damn lucky you are I didn't already file a business method patent on this puppy.

Light 'em, if you got 'em.

Posted by Ryan Singel at April 21, 2005 10:39 AM

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Tracked on April 26, 2005 08:06 PM