The Power’s Gonna Get Us Free
As I am wandering around O’Hare looking for a power outlet while I am waiting for my nearly 3 hour delayed flight–my wife wondered why I originally booked at Saturday morning flight–I had a flashback to my youth. Ten points for the first person to recognize what 70′s TV show theme song the subject of this blog post came from.
One thing I have never understood is why there is an utter lack of power outlets available in the airport or on the airplane. Every travelling techie eventually runs into the situation where they need to top off the juice in their electronic gizmos. Between the laptop, the cell phone, and the MP3 player, and whatever else you carry, something is in dire emergency of running out of batteries. Especially if your flight is delayed like mine is.
Something I noticed in Sea-Tac on a recent trip is a kisok where you can literally buy power–for your mobile phone at least. They offer adapters for a number of different phones. You swipe your credit card and you plug your mobile phone into the appropriate adapter. You are given 30 minutes of “charging time” for every $3 you spend. Works great if you forget your adapter. not so great if you have an oddball phone.
My question is: why couldn’t they extend this concept to any device? Or more importantly, why can’t the airport provide this service for free? We pay enough to travel. For many airports, you pay an airport use fee on top of the already inflated airfare. A simple kiosk with a plethora of power outlets can’t be hard to come up with.
