This Week in Badvertising
How do you figure, Delta Airlines? At its widest point, it might take me 45 minutes to swim across the East River. A boat is much faster. I could drive over a bridge, and even with gridlocked traffic, I’d still make it from shore to shore in less than an hour. A gentle jog over the Brooklyn Bridge could take 20 minutes. A chopper ride would place me in Brooklyn or Queens in minutes. And yes, even with 30-minute headways during the overnight hours, you can still make it across the East River on the subway in less than 40 minutes.
The shortest flight Delta offers from New York to a destination south of the Equator would put you in Sao Paulo, Brazil 10 hours and 15 minutes after takeoff from JFK. So, Delta, unless you also offer some sort of magical teleportation, your claim doesn’t stick.
In fact, it would be physically impossible for me to use Delta to cross the Equator faster than the East River, since I would have to cross the East River just to get to the international terminal at JFK.
Someone really didn’t think this one through.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Badvertising. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
tacony palmyra says:It’s a joke. The ad’s other claims also don’t make sense either… one says that you should visit “Japan: The Other Long Island” despite the fact that Japan is an archipelago. I think you took it a little too seriously.
March 30th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Chris says:tacony palmyra: I think you took this blog post a little too seriously.
March 30th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
e_in_nyc says:Sometimes on the L I think I could get anywhere in the world quicker.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Sarah says:You evidently haven’t spent any time between Broadway-Nassau and High St. stations…
March 31st, 2009 at 11:14 am
Matt says:Technically they are correct, since they are not referencing the starting location, physically crossing the equator takes and infinitely small amount of time whereas there is physical distance between the two banks of the east river (actually, its not a river, its a Tidal Strait.) causing the crossing of the East River to be much much longer than “stepping” over the equator. NOW whose taking this too seriously..
March 31st, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Chris says:Matt: I was actually waiting for someone to call me out on that. Good work!
March 31st, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Todd says:I was honestly waiting for you to post about this. I remember seeing it and thinking “That’s bullshit. This is totally something Chris would rip apart.”
Thanks for not disappointing