An Airline Named Derrie-Air

Philadelphia Media Holdings touts a "carbon-neutral" airline that plants trees with profits from its pound-based tickets. Then it says "smile, we’re pulling your leg."

It was a little late for an April Fool joke, but the Philadelphia newspapers jokingly ran June ads for a fictitious airline that supposedly charges its customers by their combined body and luggage weight. They named the airline Derrie-Air, a non-too-subtle reference to an often weighty section of the anatomy that the French call "le derriere."

"The more you weigh, the more you pay," said the June 5 ads in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and the newspapers’ website.

According to the Associated Press, it was a one-shot, tongue-in-cheek campaign seemingly aimed at both obesity and global warming. It was conducted by Philadelphia Media Holdings, the owner of both papers, with the help of the Gyro ad agency.

Derrie-Air, according to the ads, priced its tickets on a sliding weight scale, figuring the more pounds people brought aboard, the more fuel it took to carry them, resulting in more global warming.

"We will plant trees in deforested acres around the world to absorb all the carbon that our planes release into the atmosphere," the ads said. "The practice, known as ‘carbon offsetting’ has been adopted by a diverse array of credible entities such as famous Hollywood actors and actresses."

The ads closed with a disclaimer that said "the Derrie-Air campaign is a fictitious advertising campaign created by Philadelphia Media Holdings to test the results of advertising in our print and online products and to stimulate discussion on a timely environmental topic of interest to all citizens…

"In other words, smile, we’re pulling your leg."