One thing we've learned at Gadling this week is that oodles of people want those free Southwest Airlines tickets. So far, as of 3:44 pm, there are 1,162. Visiting people seems to be the biggest theme of many of the contenders' wishes.

Other numbers of note this week:

• Abha hooked us into a Web site that pairs 100 photos with 100 words in a single moment;
• Jeffrey noted that more than 600 people were rescued off a stranded ship in the Baltic Sea;
• In her world's most dangerous beaches post, Iva cited that in 2006, Americans took 55 million trips to a beach;
• Matthew clued us in on the 780,000 porno hits one man logged from his office in Japan; and
• Anna discovered that the world's longest bridge, located in China, is 22.4 miles long. If you drive across it too slowly, you'll get a fine. Since May 1, when it first opened, 300 people have had to pay up.

Share your numbers of note with us if you have any. One to think about is, how far can you get on one gallon of gas?

Happy Cinco De Mayo! In honor of this fifth day of May, we're teaming up with Southwest Airlines to give away a free pair of roundtrip tickets to anywhere they fly.

That's right, whether you want to fly from Albany to Albuquerque for your Aunt Jennie's Apple Pie or Washington DC to West Palm Beach, for cousin Willy's famous four-day Thanksgiving bar crawl, you can cash these tickets in on us.

Tickets are good to redeem up to one year from the contest end with no blackout dates for you and a special friend. Just leave a comment below telling us where you'd like to go should you win the tickets and we'll randomly draw one winner by this Friday. Make sure you give a shout out to our friends at Southwest for providing the tickets for the giveaway as well.

Happy travels from Gadling and Southwest Airlines!

• To enter, simply leave a comment below telling us where you'd like to go should you win the tickets (See a map of where they fly here).
  
• The comment must be left before Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 5PM Eastern Time.
• You may enter only once.
• One winner will be selected in a random drawing.
• One Grand Prize Winner will receive a free pair of roundtrip tickets to anywhere Southwest Airlines flies
  
• Open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.
• Tickets are valued at $400.00 per ticket.
• Tickets are fully transferrable, are valid for one year, and are good for travel to any of the 64 cities Southwest serves.
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

First off, I'm the type that is happy to be alone. Sometimes groups get on my nerves. Sometimes, I feel like I belong with the crowd just fine. Other times, being in a group gives me the feeling that I am wearing the wrong style clothing. Instead of a cocktail dress, I've worn jeans or vis versa.

I seriously had not a clue of what to expect when I headed off to Mexico to help build houses. I barely had time to pack. When my daughter and I were heading out the door, I couldn't find the left shoe of the pair I planned to wear when I wasn't hammering and sawing. I gave up and grabbed another. What I have found, in general, that it is hard to do good-deeds on ones own. My biggest successes have been when I am part of something bigger than myself.

For this good-deed trip, we had to be at the airport by 6:00 a.m. to hook up with the group scheduled for the Southwest Airlines flight two hours later. There was comfort in being handed a list of the people in my travel group and their name tags by one of the trip leaders. I felt hooked in with a purpose, a reason to be along, and not like one of those body parts that we don't really need. I had on the right clothes. It didn't matter that I was only in charge of keeping track of five people besides myself. The words, "Here's your travel group," roused me from my early morning bleary state of a lack of sleep.

If you have the foresight to have your fall travel already planned, Southwest Airlines just released a coupon code that will get you 15% off between August 23rd and October 30th.

Use coupon code DING15 to get your discount, but hurry -- the coupon code is only valid through April 21. Much of Labor day is also blacked out, so if you want to travel over that weekend make sure you take a couple of extra days off and be flexible.

Still not good enough? Keep your ears tuned to Gadling. I hear we might have some tickets to give away in the next few weeks.

Yesterday CNN broke a story that two FAA inspectors have decided to come forward and start talking. And have they talked. According to Bobby Boutris and Douglas Peters, the issues with Southwest Airlines not complying with FAA safety inspections is an old problem that the FAA has known about, but has ignored. Boutris and Peters, uncomfortable with the FAA protocol not being followed, decided to spill because they feel they owe taxpayers a job well done.

They said that FAA looked the other way when Southwest flew 70 airplanes--or more, 30 months past the time they should have had their rudders inspected. The rudder is one of those important parts. It's connected to the steering mechanism. Another not inspected part FAA knew about according to these two? The fuselage, or the skin. This inspection finds cracks. There were 47 planes that weren't inspected when they should have been. During inspection 6 of them had cracks that could have been dangerous. That's a comfort. Glad they found those. CNN has not been able to snag an interview with FAA higher ups, thus far.

Today there's a hearing on Capitol Hill with the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to help find out WHAT THE (fill in an expletive)?! CNN is staying up on this one. Boutris and Peters want whistle blower protection. I wonder who will play them in the movie version? Remember Russell Crowe in "The Insider," the movie about the tobacco industry?

See previous Gadling posts about Southwest's inspection story here, here, and here.

Over a year ago, I wrote about how you can print your Southwest Airlines boarding pass without a printer, but since then I got a Blackberry and have adapted the same concept to a cell phone.

Two weekends ago, I was in Chicago for St. Patrick's Day, and instead of leaving the party mid-day Saturday to find a computer to check in and get my "A" boarding pass for our Sunday flight back home, I used my cell phone's Internet browser to login to Southwest Airline's website. Once I entered in my information, it took me to the screen where I could select the passengers to check in and hit "print boarding pass."

Obviously I didn't have a printer attached to my cell phone, but with Southwest's system it doesn't matter. I was able to see on-screen that I had secured an "A" boarding pass, so I closed out of it and continued on my marry way. Come Sunday, hungover and ready for the flight back home, we arrived at Midway and found a SWA check-in kiosk. There I swiped my credit card, and instead of selecting "print boarding pass," I selected "re-print boarding pass."

Southwest does this in case you lose your boarding pass or run out of printer ink mid-print, but it's perfect for checking in using your cell phone or printing your boarding pass if you don't have a printer at home, but still want that coveted "A" position. Give it a try.

Paypal seems to be trying to get some clout in the financial market. Last week I found a deal where they were offering 50$ off NWA flights booked with their proprietary online money tool. Unbeknownst to this blogger, it looks like they also kicked off the same promo for Southwest Airlines passengers. You need to book before March 27th, and the logistics all work in the same way that the NW deal does.

Check out Southwest's promo page for additional info.

What they don't mention on the site is if there are any restrictions on date of travel, so for now you might be able to get away with booking tickets late in the year using the code. So if you need to book anything through the summer (say, for the Fourth of July) when ticket prices are higher, you can plan ahead and jump on this deal now.

If you decide to wait in hopes that the ticket prices will go down, you're playing a risky game. Tourist and traveler season is over the summer and you're going to have a hard time finding tickets at reasonable rates. Best book your tickets now.

See Paula? Not all WN news is bad.

Leave it to travel guru Christopher Elliott to find out. Over at his blog, Chris recounts a recent flight aboard Southwest from Albuquerque to Orlando, and finds that no one-- not flight attendants or passengers-- really seem too concerned with the recent safety issues.

Chris quotes one flight attendant who says, " "We've had a lot of cracks [pun intended?] about the whole inspection thing. No serious questions. Most of them are just joking around."

The general vibe among Southwest employees, unsurprisingly, is that the stories have been blown way out of proportion. Chris tends to agree, and notes that, "There are only a handful of airline reporters in the United States with the depth of knowledge and experience to put an event like this into perspective – to be able to separate the political grandstanding from the PR and get to the core issue."

He adds: "I would even go as far to say that bloggers have covered the Southwest story more responsibly – more timely, with better sense of perspective and more clear-headed insights than my buddies in the mainstream media have."

Oh, stop. We're blushing.

For more on Chris' reconnaissance mission aboard Southwest, check out the whole article here.

We just had a link sent to us by another blogger out in the ether about another incident in which Southwest Airlines (WN) asked someone to change clothing.

As told by Chadrick Baker on crowvalen.com, WN flight attendants we're concerned by his shirt that said "I'm a fuckin' genius" and asked him to do something about it. Initially she asked him to take it off, but let's be honest, do you think she wanted him to walk around bare chested?

When asked by Mr. Baker about what the airline's policy was on the issue, she would only state that it was a "family airline" and insisted on him finally putting a jacket on. After the exchange, he awoke when a flight attendant was in the aisle next to him facing the back of the plane, saying "K, seriously." On the way out, that same flight attendant and an officer were at the front of the plane, but didn't say anything to him.

Whether or not these last two events were with regard to his t-shirt, he didn't know. But he maintains that the shirt was fine to wear, pointing out that he received several compliments about it from other passengers, including a little boy's mother.

And he's right, in that regard. Southwest doesn't really have a policy on what one can and cannot wear -- you could probably show up in a thong and a sombrero and argue that you should be allowed on the flight.

But should you? I feel like certain attire is appropriate for certain occasions. Were you to wear something like this to a bar, like this guy did earlier in the week, I bet most people would get a kick out of it. But if you're wearing it in an environment where people sensitive to the word might be offended, like the library, grocery store or airport, you should probably wear something that isn't going to irk half of the people out there. Why run the risk?

And don't give me any crap about not being allowed to wear what you want in public -- this isn't about your first amendment rights or an airline's policy. It's about respecting the passengers around you and setting a good example.

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Because of the recent grounding of 41 44 planes in Southwest's fleet due to missed safety inspections, the airline stands to lose quite a few customers.

Even though we all know that we're more likely to die in an automobile accident than a plane crash, many of us are still more nervous on a plane than in a car, myself included. In light of those nerves, I wonder how many people will -- consciously or subconsciously -- choose other airlines over Southwest with all the negative media attention its getting.

I'm not in a region where Southwest flies, so I'm unlikely to have to make a consumer choice for or against them any time soon. But what about you?