More Airports Charging For Power Outlets → Why not charge?

It costs the airport money, why shouldn't they be able to charge for it? There is nothing that says you have to use their power outlet. You can carry an extra battery if you are so tight you can't fork over $2.

Gotta love it...business travelers spending hundreds or even thousands on car, hotel, airline tickets, laptop, suits, pressing, luggage, transfers, then bitch about $2 for a service that helps the business traveler make even more money while they're sitting at the airport.

Just pay the $2 or buy another battery and STFU.

I have already paid for power in my house... therefore I should be able to use it anywhere. The power industry is just being greedy. They've really shot themselves in the foot here. They're alienating their customers. What a terrible business model.

jehu let me count the ways your are wrong:

1. Power for almost all houses is metered so you only pay for the power you use not some flat rate.

2. The power companies are not the ones imposing the charge, the airports are. The airports are the greedy ones, one only needs to look at Boston's ridiculous "ban" on their tenants offering free wifi for their own customers.

Did you just write what I think you just wrote?

haha!

im not letting you in my house, evar!

but seriously, i dont think that i would mind so much if they charged for the cost of the electricity. but charging a flat rate of 3$ per hour is a lot of profit.

and meters for measuring electricity could easily be intigrated to a power strip.

A lot of people don't realize that just because an outlet is in the wall, that it is NOT available to as many devices as you can plug into it via multi-outlet strip. The fact is the number of outlets are determined by capacity of the circuit. The circuit capacity is based on expected load. Suppose the circuit is loaded to the expected use, but now add the demand for of outlets for use by notebooks, etc (I do mean etc - what's to prevent someone from plugging in a beverage warmer?), because the gate area is filling for a flight; an overload can develop and cause the circuit to trip.

Now we've got the problem of getting the correct service person to determine the problem, removing the overload, and restoring the power. Keep in mind - some of the equipment used by the airline might also be on this circuit... Hopefully, you can see that this is much bigger than "just a couple of unused outlets" on a wall.

Technically, this is "theft of service". You have not paid for nor been given permission to use the outlet. It is not provided for the traveling public. It's no different than using your neighbor's outdoor plug to power your kitchen light.

As far as $150 - $200 per outlet; yes this an accepted industry standard cost figure. It includes costs of everything from the fuel in the vehicle to employees' paid holidays - and *everything* in between (materials, permits, salaries, insurance, interest, the list goes on and on).

In short (no pun intended), the circuit wasn't designed to be connected to multi-outlet strips that allow the number of connected devices to increase exponentially.

Of course, what you fail to mention is that all those wall outlets are on multiple circuits (most likely 20 Amp circuits in a commercial building) and the airlines equipment is most likely to be on dedicated circuits.

"theft of service"? Need I remind you that these outlets are out in the open, unrestricted, in a publicly owned building (most airports are owned by the local county or city government and so are public buildings paid for with taxes)? This one would never fly.

Considering the enormous amount of power consumed by such a complex, a few laptops, etc wouldn't even be noticed. Such a "usage" charge is simply another tax on a persons travel, the same as the "lodging" tax you pay at most motels/hotels. Just another government hand in your pocket, yet they are allways crying that they dont have enough, which is rediculous.

Oops my bad I thought this was another RIAA thread and I was just pasting my sound-bytes. Carry on.