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> of the 3,009 flight segments Dad booked for himself from May 2005 to December 2008, he either canceled or was considered a “no-show” for 84 percent of those r

• supercanuck 7y ago
  As a frequent flyer, 2005-2008 was also a period of time when there were empty seats on planes and the airline industry was still recovering from 9/11. You could fly and half the plane might be empty. Cancellations fees weren't nearly as bad either. Let's not jump to conclusions that he was acting in bad faith.
  • koolba 7y ago
    First class tickets usually do not have cancellation fees. They’re fully refundable.
    • eli 7y ago
      But there’s no lost revenue - no actual cost - for cancelling a ticket nobody else was ever going to buy anyway.
      • chrischen 7y ago
        Nobody bought it because it was unavailable.
        • msinclair 7y ago
          And if he had flown, it still would have been unavailable. Along with the other thousands of booked flights.
          • theelous3 7y ago
            This is a major part of the problem for me. In my opinion, if you want to judge this as fraud, you have to do it, at least in part, by looking at it through the lense of a regular passenger. If a regular passenger who pays for each ticket individually did this, would they have a problem? Of course not. AA could only dream of such a passenger. They abused people's generally poor financial reasoning to claim fraud uncontested. It's easy to get people to think of this as "free flights for life, poor airline abused" simply because the ticket was so massively undervalued compared to the use potential. In reality, each and every one of those seats were paid for, AA were just upset with themselves for the price they charged and fabricated a fraud claim to end it.
            • dfxm12 7y ago
              These are two different products, akin to a subscription service vs outright buying something, so the comparison isn't apt. You can return something to the big box store where you bought it if you don't use it. You're not entitled to that with the subscription service.
              • theelous3 7y ago
                It's not a subscription, he outright prepaid for the rest of his entire life, for the service he was paying for individually. So similar is the product, that a separate system wasn't even designed for it and he'd still get stuff like airmiles per flight. It was a prepay for the same product, not a subscription for a new one.
    • discordance 7y ago
      That's true. Reminds me of a story of a guy who would buy a first class ticket, go to the lounge and eat lunch, and then reschedule his ticket for the next day, every day... free lunch for a year[0]. 0: https://nypost.com/2014/01/29/man-uses-first-class-plane-ticket-to-eat-free-for-a-year/ https://nypost.com/2014/01/29/man-uses-first-class-plane-tic...
      • chrischen 7y ago
        Isn’t the lounge usually inside security after checkin? You can still cancel after checking in with a ticket?
        • RyJones 7y ago
          Yes. I’ve done it before - plans change
        • lscharen 7y ago
          I re-booked a flight while in the security line because I got an alert that my original flight was delayed and was offered a "tap here to re-book on this flight" button. So I did. It took a minute to explain why my printed boarding pass no longer matched my flight itinerary when I got to the front of the security line, but not too big of a hassle.
  • josefx 7y ago
    Officially[1] they terminated it based on him: * Making up fake names * Substituting these fake names for random travelers he picked up at the airport * Once they warned him about the fake names he started to make up travel arraignments for friends. As proof they showed his flight records. He argued that AAs ability to just terminate the contract based on his behavior was unenforceable. [1]https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/illinois/ilndce/1:2009cv02770/231263/95/ https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/illinoi...
• cher88 7y ago
  It sounds like the tickets were cancelled the next day anyway, so it's not like they couldn't have re-sold or given away..
• halter73 7y ago
  It was AA who was acting in bad faith. If they wanted to stop the so-called fraudulent usage of the pass, they could have just asked. He cancelled so many flights because he thought that was allowed. If they told the guy he would lose his lifetime pass if he kept cancelling or no-showing, he would have stopped. AA didn't give him a single warning. He always booked through an human agent, so they had plenty of opportunities. Instead they let him through airport security, and took his lifetime pass at the gate leaving him without his luggage. This was clearly the act of a company that had a huge liability based on a one-sided contract that was easy for them to break out of. The only question is whether it was worth the PR hit, but it doesn't seem like the blowback has been that bad so far.
  • jquery 7y ago
    I feel like they were both acting in bad faith. He blamed his alcoholism and depression, AA blamed the speculative purchases, there’s more to the story on both sides. I completely sympathize with him emotionally. But at the same time, he had a golden ticket with rules, he broke the rules for a long time and it took AA and an army of investigators to prove it and a court that agreed. You can say they should’ve warned him, but that’s business, the court found him in breach of contract, a contract that was costing AA $millions, it’s no wonder they sued him for breach instead of warning him when his booked seats were empty most of the time. You don’t get to play the victim when you’re in breach of contract and costing the counter party millions. Again, I sympathize with him emotionally. It sucks. Life isn’t always roses. It would have been nice of AA to warn him, yes. But they weren’t obligated to, and he was a smart finance guy who understood contracts. Even he seems more upset that they were “mean” about it than surprised it happened at all.
    • sverhagen 7y ago
      I agree with you. And while I am quite sympathetic to this gentleman's story myself, and while I also don't even think the revocation of the AAirpass for him was morally warranted (or at least there we go into the fuzzy details of the suit), I just wanted to add that the brief "FRAUDULENT USAGE" excerpt does not at all create an expectation to my "IANAL" eyes that there were any advance warnings to be expected. So, while I can see a legal argument over the validity of the cancellation, I don't see it over some demand of having to be warned ahead of time. But again, IANAL, just a guy.
• listenallyall 7y ago
  You are quoting/repeating the very specific parameters, and words, specifically chosen by American's army of data analysts to best support its legal case and put Mr. Rothstein in the worst possible light. I seriously doubt American offered the raw reservation data to Mr. Rothstein so he could counter. How long was the average reservation active before it was cancelled? How many days before the flight were the reservations cancelled? What percentage were cancellations vs no-shows? What percent of the flights had open seats at all, or in first-class (prior to comped upgrades)? Why go back to exactly May 2005 -- was his cancellation rate declining by 2008? >> There is a cost to this A lower cost than if he actually flew all 3009 flight segments -- which he was fully entitled to do.
  • carlivar 7y ago
    American doesn't have to offer that data. His lawyer could demand it in discovery. I'm sure that was done, any competent lawyer would have done so.
  • jquery 7y ago
    >which he was fully entitled to do. And AA was entitled to sue for breach without warning. The blade cuts both ways.
    • listenallyall 7y ago
      How is that relevant to the quote? Anyone can sue anyone for anything. Are you claiming he was not entitled to fly all 3009 segments, had he chosen to?
      • jquery 7y ago
        No, I’m saying if you want to go by the letter of the rules, AA had no obligation to warn him, even if that would have been the nice thing to do. So pointing out what he was “legally entitled” to only makes AA’s case stronger because from a legal perspective he was more clearly in the wrong by booking empty seats with a fake name.
• hatfieej 7y ago
  Listing the number based on flight segments makes it sound much worse than it really is. It seems like he flew internationally a lot -- so every round-trip cancellation could easily be 6 segments. I've often had to reschedule a trip twice. On those occasions, I'm only flying 0.33 of the segments I booked. His cancellations are only twice that. And with the golden ticket and no consequences, I could easily see a person with a busy schedule often booking two trips to have the seats reserved and then only taking the one they need. While he was abusing the system since there was no penalty, there are some of legitimate reasons too.
  • opencl 7y ago
    He literally said that he repeatedly booked flights that he had zero intention of ever taking just so he could talk to somebody on the phone.
  • JackFr 7y ago
    > I'm only flying 0.33 of the segments I booked. His cancellations are only twice that. Every single day for 3.5 years
• awillen 7y ago
  Why not tell him to stop? Why wait until years later? The problem is that their actions make it clear that they didn't have issues with his conduct. Rather, they decided to cut costs and as a result decided to retroactively reexamine behavior that they had clearly condoned, at least implicitly, years later. He wasn't acting in bad faith - when they asked him to make changes to his behavior with the pass, he did. Every indication is that if the airline had politely asked him to stop booking flights and canceling them without a good reason, he would have. They were, on the other hand, clearly not acting in good faith. That's the issue.