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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 reservations.
So for a period of three and a half years, he booked about 2.3 flights a day, every day, and then only flew on about 1 in 6 of them. And he did a similar thing with his companion ticket.
There is a cost to this — 1st class seats the airline couldn’t sell or give to more valuable customers. The greater cost to the airline it seems was not flying this guy around, but his cancellations - which cost him nothing. And I think the judge, and many reasonable people would say that while the rules are unclear, he was clearly acting in bad faith.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
On the one hand, AA could have handled this much better.
The author repeats almost every paragraph that even though the bookings were "fraudulent", AA never had an issue with them until they wanted to cancel the pass.
On the other hand, the whole article reeks of privilege, both by the rich-kid author and the guy. I understand that it is unfair to reneg. But the pass, and the whole system these people live in, is based on unsustainable and negative externalities on people who certainly can not fly to Sweden or Paris just to pick up flowers!
Indeed, the "identity" of using an airplane like a bus is not a good one. Airplane travel is one contributor to climate change, something that will (of course) hit poor countries really hard.
Again, I understand the feeling when something like that is taken away. But beyond a miniscule, yet direct, contribution to climate change, someone who just flies across the ocean because he (or she) can to do something that could have been done at home as well, and call it an "identity" - ignoring that it has a real and terrible effect (even if the contribution is small) on the weakest among us - I dunno.
In that light, I just can't help to feel disgusted by this guy. Now, I am sure I am not the one who should throw the first stone etc... but she did write that article for me to read. So there it is.
To me, this story is a great illustration of how we humans will always try to become fat cats by clinging to and expanding upon any privilege we may have or comfortable situation we may find ourselves in. Be it something small, like free snacks in the breakroom at work, or something big, like free unlimited air travel, or something vast, like cheap abundant fossil energy, if there is any way whatsoever to externalize the costs of our privileges and benefits, then, naturally, that's what we do. And should this privilege that we have now come to consider our right ever be taken away, we are of course duly offended.
So I find this guy's reaction pretty understandable. I would love to think that I wouldn't so unreasonably take advantage of a playing field so absurdly tilted in my favor, and that I wouldn't be outraged when such a tilt was corrected. But such situations twist your perception of the world and it's hard to even know you're doing it.
Yes, I can't believe it but I'm actually sympathizing with the airline.
He booked fake reservations under fake names in case someone might want to travel with him. The fact no one at the airline asked him to stop committing fraud until 2004 does not lessen the fact he was, in fact, defrauding the airline out of thousands of dollars.
If he had just used the tickets as intended he'd probably still have his pass.
The “I won’t be able to pick up flowers in Paris on my 70th birthday!” complaint was my favorite gem here. I was 100% unsympathetic to this family by the end of this read.
> On the other hand, the whole article reeks of privilege, both by the rich-kid author and the guy. I
So what? Is that the guy had more privilege than you what's wrong? What about everyone that has less privilege than you?
> But the pass, and the whole system these people live in, is based on unsustainable and negative externalities on people who certainly can not fly to Sweden or Paris just to pick up flowers!
That's AA mistake and they are the ones paying for it.
> But beyond a miniscule, yet direct, contribution to climate change, someone who just flies across the ocean
Completely agree, but at the end it's AA that's doing theses damages and aren't compensating for them.
> On the other hand, the whole article reeks of privilege
So? What's wrong with privilege? You're talking about someone who signed a contract and paid for this privilege. That contract entitled him to use this privilege. It's understandable that he'd be upset when he lost it.
If you relied on a bus pass (unlimited privilege to use the bus) and the city took it away would you be upset?
If you rely on your car and the state took your driver's license away (unlimited privilege to drive) would you be upset?
What about your ISP cancelling your internet connection for using too much data?
You may scoff at these comparisons because they cost orders of magnitude less but it's exactly the same concept.
I gave up reading about half way through, my sympathy just gave out completely, for the reasons you mentioned.
There's an interesting angle here of what a "superpower" does to someone's psychology. He internalized the ability to do these extraordinary things - including using the phone staff as a therapist line - as such a part of his identity, that he was devastated by having to live normally again. It's hard for myself to imagine myself getting to the point where I think I'm that special, but I'm not so naive to think that if I had a bunch of money and/or privilege for decades it couldn't happen to me too.
> “So in my incoherent state,” he writes, “I would book a seat for Dan or Laurie just imagining that they might come. I was making reservations and didn’t know whether I was even going. Here is why. I was up and [alone] in my home office and bored. So I would call the 800 number for the AAirpass desk and talk to the agent about the news or the weather or about Paris or little London. Then, after an hour of nothing they had to hang up. So I would make a reservation and ask them to fax it to me. Then the next day I would take the fax and cancel the reservation. I needed someone to talk to at midnight. The 800 number was open.”
Even his son says up front that he doesn't see what his dad was doing as such a sensational, extraordinary thing, that that description "doesn’t quite land," which is astonishing too.
I once had a superpower like this. I bought the Verizon Unlimited 4G internet plan before throttling or data caps were a thing in roughly 2010.
I had the Droid Razr Maxx and later Samsung Galaxy S5 with 1 5 dollar app that turned my phone into a hotspot (FoxFi) that the Verizon could neither detect, prevent, or charge extra for. I used 200+ GB's of blazing fast internet over the air for something like $50 a month for about 5 years.
It was an insanely good deal. The only rules were I was not allowed to make any modifications to the plan because it was taken off the market and I was considered "grandfathered" in. The "unlimited" plans of today are nothing like that plan was. They have data caps, are throttled, and traffic get reprioritized.
It was just as much a part of me as this ticket was for this gentleman (well not quite that much, but you get the point). Eventually Verizon just flat out upped the price to over $100 per month and it became unsustainable. Glorious while it lasted, sorely missed.
> Even his son says
The article is by his daughter Caroline.
>but I'm not so naive to think that if I had a bunch of money and/or privilege for decades it couldn't happen to me too.
Precisely, and that is the 'secret' of money, its mystery ans "phantom-like objectivity". A famous German philosopher once wrote,
"That which is for me through the medium of money – that for which I can pay (i.e., which money can buy) – that am I myself, the possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money’s properties are my – the possessor’s – properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has [In the manuscript: ‘is’. – Ed.] power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?"
This is the story of typically bad business decision of offering anything "unlimited".
I just cancelled my account with the vendor of "unlimited" cloud storage (who would throttle uploads to their promised unlimited cloud storage to curb the effects of bad business decision) to the benefit of clear, high performance vendor.
Whenver you see "unlimited" or "unlimted forever" - question this. If nothing else - ride the wave but don't expect it to be "unlimited" or "forever".
This. Don't try to win against whoever you do business with, look for arrangements where both sides can get their needs well catered for. If it looks like you are winning what the other is losing, there must be something hidden that you can't see, likely something big and important (like e.g. the insurance being exceptionally good at finding reasons for not paying). If it looks kind of balanced, there is at least a chance that the impression is not misleading.
I once saw an ISP in Thailand advertising "unlimited speed": https://imgur.com/a/Gcl6JTF
Supermarket chain Lidl had a promotion over a decade ago where they sold Air Berlin flights for 20€, the vouchers could be exchange for open seats in any flight for a year after the promotion was on.
I bought dozens of them, and basically spent a whole year travelling for essentially nothing, and like the author in the story giving away air tickets on a whim.
Backblaze seems to have made a business model out of unlimited cloud backup for a single computer.
They do it by building their own super high capacity, super low cost storage pods, deduplicating data and relying on the fact that most people don't have multiple TB of data on their personal computers.
This guy was clearly abusing the program.
"...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 reservations. During the same time period, he booked 2,648 flight segments for travel companions, and 2,269 were either canceled or a no-show."
Booked 3,009 flight segments in ~42 months. That's 17 flights a week, or 2.4 a day. He was basically using the companion pass to reserve empty seats.
Did American screw up by not having better usage guidelines? Yes. Did this guy take clear advantage of this program with bad faith? Yes.
Bad faith? How many of those cancelled tickets were just re-booked for an earlier/later flight, or a day later?
The reason airlines charge such harsh penalties for flight changes is because, if it were free or cheap to do so, everybody would constantly be adjusting their travel arrangements. Almost every airline trip I book, by the time it actually comes, I wish I could take a slightly different flight time or day.
>> 17 flights a week So what? Why is that relevant when the pass is unlimited?
Wait, was there a bad faith guideline in the deal they offered. I mean I understand a little almost broke company like American can't afford this stuff, so hard decisions had to be made and deals they entered in with customers were broken just to stay afloat. It wasn't like they have $44.724B in annual revenues or anything that you might say - those guys have the wherewithal to honor the stupid agreements they make with customers.
Did you catch the fact that it wasn’t his idea to start doing that and that they never told him not to do so?
A few things to consider. If he had turned up to all of those flights there is the exact same financial situation for the airline as if he cancels at the very last moment, so him cancelling or not showing up is not an issue. The airline didn't complain that he booked too many flights. What would be an issue is if he double-booked flights, so there would be one he couldn't turn up to at all, this would be screwing the airline and bad faith. If he had done this he would have to know he would be inconveniencing the airline. The court case didn't bring this up and I would presume if they're willing to pull out specifics like the aforementioned cancellations, then they would jump at showing he double-booked flights. This leads me to believe he never did this, so he always intended to take the flights or at least wanted the opportunity available for him to take them, which really you should be able to with an unlimited ticket like that.
It seems like AA had reasonable issues with how the pass was used, but it was pretty clear they were simply looking for justifications to cancel it. A warning and clarification of terms would have been sufficient.
But I'm sure cancelling these passes reduced expenses-- at least on paper.
They’re the same issue as pensions - liabilities that can’t be funded because there is no theoretical upper bound (even if there is a practical one). An absolute nightmare for bean counters.
One trans Atlantic flight can burn as much as fuel as typical person would burn on a car Inna year.
With so many pointless flights, I can't even wrap my head around his environment foot print.
actually: https://www.google.com/search?q=fuel+use+per+flight+per+pers...
that said, burning jet fuel is substantially worse for the environment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati...
> One trans Atlantic flight can burn as much as fuel as typical person would burn on a car Inna year.
Do you have a link on this? I've tried to look up numbers on this multiple times in the past, but reliable numbers have been hard to come by, especially for recent years. The ones I recall said that trans-continental flights in the US use something like 1/5 of a year's worth of car emissions, not a whole year's worth.
I doubt the airplane flew just for him... At worst he added maybe 200 pounds of extra weight.
Heard about the AAirpass from Mark Cuban who calls it one of the best things he's ever bought. If I had 250k to spend on one, I'd definitely do it too. There's something magical about being able to point to a place on the globe and get there in hours and apparently there's still a few valid ones out there.
Yet another worthless article lamenting the fact that an immensely privileged person had a minor inconvenience to their lifestyle.
It's not exactly something that "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity", as according to the HN guidelines - obsessing over the idle rich is not an intellectual pursuit.
Reminds me of Max-Hervé George and his fund investment contract:
This was a captivating article of a time when a company severely mispriced a product. I wonder what are today’s products that have this sort of potential mispricings?
The decent thing to do would have been to give him a warning first, before they suddenly revoked the pass.
Interesting read, one note:
> Dad’s luggage went to London. They wouldn’t help him get it back. He called someone in the baggage department at Heathrow, who assisted. Aamil never made it to Sarajevo. In fact, that was one of the last times they ever spoke. Ultimately, Aamil disappeared from our lives.
After the Lockerbie bombing, I thought that aviation rules where changed to prevent a flight taking off if the owner of checked in luggage isn't on board the plane, so this was a bit surprising. I wonder if AA broke a few rules here in their haste to terminate the pass?
> taking away something integral to who he was.
Uhh... so flying at a very discounted rate was integral to who he was? His identity? That seems a bit much. I'm finding it hard to sympathise with this guy, although AA sold a "lifetime" ticket, so that was their mistake and they should honour it. If it had turned out to have made them money instead, they'd happily continue. They made a miscalculation, that's on them.
Did they terminate other people's tickets? The interesting article does mention booking the extra seat and not using it.
I feel this is the dystopia we are heading to.
Not some big brother.
Not some soma magic happy pill.
But rather a convoluted mess of 'user agreements' - which are designed to basically give all power to the corporate masters that create them. Some of them are even auto tripped by filters and algorithms.
If I took the money of a corporation and then reneged on providing what I promised at the time of billing, I'd get sued to death, and even imprisoned.
But a paypal account? Uber? Upwork? - Closed, earnings forfeit and anything else they want to do. Sometimes, no human recourse at all, just machines deciding.
The worst part is that the majority of the population are inclined to side with the powerful, just look at some of the comments. Some people can't see theft if it is done by the powerful, it becomes 'enforcement of rules', or 'use of tips to pay services', or 'creation of accounts to increase fees', or 'forfeiture of funds'.
I have a hard time feeling sympathetic to either party here. Clearly the man was violating the terms of the contract with speculative bookings and booking seats for his luggage under fake names. OTOH, the airline clearly intended for these to be like lifetime gym memberships where people buy them and then hardly use them (an unrealistic expectation for something that cost $250K in 1980's dollars) and was looking for any way possible to cancel their obligations once this didn't play out as hoped.
Previous AAirpass thread (2012): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12802751.
I think there were others?
I'm really struggling to get my head around the emotional trauma here. He bought the unlimited ticket, got many multiples of value from it over 30 years, and then they renegged. Had they never offered the ticket, he would have paid much more overall (even though he would almost certainly have also flown less), and would only be exactly where he is now: a poor schlub who has to buy airline tickets to travel. Where is the loss?
Every regular customer should be thankful this was put to an end. Keep in mind such every regular customer will have to pay for such extravaganza that will have to be reflected in the ticket prices after all.