
The Man with the Golden Airline Ticket - chha
https://narratively.com/the-man-with-the-golden-airline-ticket/
======
zwaps
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.

~~~
wastholm
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.

~~~
listenallyall
>> privilege we may have

membership for which he paid $400k

>> such a tilt was ~~corrected~~

completely eliminated, without recourse

~~~
close04
> completely eliminated, without recourse

For breaching the contractual agreement, something the court has also observed
and ruled on.

This man indeed paid for something but then used it in a way that was an abuse
from the contractual perspective and (saying this as a regular person) also
from a common sense perspective. He showed a lot of bad faith and this
undermined his case.

~~~
ethbro
The lack of notification from AA of purported abuse should have been enough to
get the case thrown out.

The abuse being serious enough to force AA to revoke the pass... yet not
serious enough that they discovered or communicated it before they decided to
revoke the pass?

I can't square that logic.

------
JackFr
> 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.

~~~
halter73
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
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.

~~~
laGrenouille
I would generally agree with your logic, but the problem here is that he broke
AA's interpretation of a vaguely worded rule rather than clearly committing a
violation of the terms. Given this AA should have contacted him about their
view of "fradulent" usage.

~~~
DebtDeflation
> AA's interpretation of a vaguely worded rule

It's debatable whether or not frequent speculative bookings constitute fraud.
It's not debatable whether booking a seat for your luggage with the companion
pass under a fake name is fraud.

~~~
listenallyall
“The example given to me [by AA] was that Yo-Yo Ma ... flew with his [cello]
in the next seat. Under those terms I bought the extra seat.”

AA endorsed the practice.

------
majormajor
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.

~~~
171243
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.

~~~
serpix
We have unlimited, uncapped 4G plans in Finland and probably most of Europe
does.

~~~
schrodinger
Not with unlimited tethering though, right?

~~~
donalhunt
In some cases, yes. In fact, one of the Irish mobile operators currently has
an all-you-can-eat prepay sim top-up promotion that gives you unlimited 4g
data for €20 every 28 days.

They have a fair usage policy but don't enforce it (no idea why) and chatting
with their pricing personnel it makes no economic sense (they lose money on
it). It would appear it's a sacrifice they are currently willing to make to
ensure market share increases.

~~~
theelous3
Yep, I have this and often just teather up piles of people. Never have to
think about usage. Now that I mention teathering, I don't think there are any
Irish service providers who attempt to monitor or regulate teathering, which
is nice.

------
gesman
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".

~~~
peterkelly
I once saw an ISP in Thailand advertising "unlimited speed":
[https://imgur.com/a/Gcl6JTF](https://imgur.com/a/Gcl6JTF)

~~~
npiht
It could mean that the speed is uncapped to what the physical medium and the
current network congestion allows.

------
tomnipotent
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.

~~~
listenallyall
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?

~~~
tomnipotent
>> The reason airlines charge such harsh penalties...

Scheduling and logistics is a perfectly good reason for having these
expectations. Airlines have horrible margins (< 10%) in even good years, and
fuel and staff isn't free. Planning is kind of a big deal in an industry like
this, and you can't do that if everything is last minute.

>> Why is that relevant when the pass is unlimited?

He cancelled 84% of flights. Eighty. Four. Percent. This is such an absurd
number that I cannot see how else you can look at this other than abuse. Maybe
10%? Sure.20%? Pushing it, but I could see that in special circumstances. Once
you're cancelling 5-6x more flights than you're actually going on, there's a
problem.

~~~
listenallyall
Changing/cancelling a 2-day-old reservation 6 months out -- not "last minute"
\-- has a negligible cost. However, AA will still charge a non-elite customer
$200. If you could prove that the majority of Mr. Rothstein's cancellations
were made within a week, even a month, of the actual flight, perhaps I'd agree
with you, but that data is not available to us, and his daughter inferred that
many tickets were cancelled within a day or two.

You are using AA's chosen nomenclature against Mr. Rothstein. Was he truly
"cancelling" or just changing the date/time/stopover most of these times
(which AA would call a cancel/re-issue)? What about changing his seat at the
gate -- the agent rips up the boarding pass and issues a new one. Is that
considered a cancellation? If I was in court trying to amplify percentages to
disparage someone, I'd probably say it was.

------
danielfoster
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.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
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.

~~~
brianpgordon
Well, there's got to be a dollar amount that it's worth to them to have fully
funded liabilities, and if it's as high as you seem to be saying then I'm
pretty sure they could have gone to an investment bank or insurer or something
and gotten them to write a custom product to cap their liability. I thought a
good part of investment banking business consisted of corporate finance deals
to shift miscellaneous risks like this off their clients' books.

My guess is that it's just the sheer cost that American balked at, not the
uncertainty in exactly how much he would cost them.

------
Ayesh
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.

~~~
mehrdadn
> 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.

~~~
ISL
Using these numbers: [https://theicct.org/publications/transatlantic-airline-
fuel-...](https://theicct.org/publications/transatlantic-airline-fuel-
efficiency-ranking-2017) , which shows ~34 pax-km/l efficiency

and the fact that a Prius does ~40 km/l, a plane flight, per-passenger, does
about as well as a single-occupancy vehicle for each passenger travelling the
same distance. The environmental trouble really comes from the fact that it is
easy to fly long distances. It is ~7400 miles from SFO to Sydney, so a round-
trip really does burn about as much gas as a year's worth of single-occupancy
automobile driving.

The article states that the person in question flew at least 30,000,000 miles.
That is, in carbon terms, assuming a 2017 aircraft, equivalent to driving
around the world at least ~1200 times in a single-occupancy vehicle.

~~~
mehrdadn
I think the 40 km/l is unrealistic -- that's 95 mpg. Your average car is
apparently(?) under a quarter of that, 22 mpg [3]. Although I feel like this
is probably a low-ball (possibly old) figure? My guess would've been like 30
mpg, but I don't know how much of the population has a new car.

The source I had was [1] which said a plane emits ~0.9 tons of
CO2/person/round-trip, whereas the average car emits ~4.6 tons/year [2]. At
1.7 persons/car [3] that's 2.7 tons CO2/person/year. Now interestingly, I
can't seem to see a source for the 0.9-ton figure; I do see some other sites
[4] that claim a one-way flight of that distance emits 2.8 tons, which is a 6x
difference... I'm not sure which one is accurate. But there's another site [5]
quoting a similar figure to the 0.9 tons.

So funny enough I'm kinda back where I'm started... not sure what the right
figure is to even 5x...

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/climate/airplane-
pollutio...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/climate/airplane-pollution-
global-warming.html)

[2] [https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-
emissions-t...](https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-
typical-passenger-vehicle)

[3]
[https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/tpm/guidance/avo_factors.pdf](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/tpm/guidance/avo_factors.pdf)

[4] [https://content.sierraclub.org/outings/carbon-
offsets](https://content.sierraclub.org/outings/carbon-offsets)

[5] [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/if-you-travel-and-
care...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/if-you-travel-and-care-about-
environment-you-should-buy-carbon-offsets-180952222/)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>My guess would've been like 30 mpg, but I don't know how much of the
population has a new car. //

I just ditched a 15yo 7 seater (Opel/Vauxhall Zafira) with engine troubles
(burning a lot of oil - maybe a piston compression problem; leaking exhaust
manifold), and having a roofbox, and it was still doing 34mpg (UK; that's
15km/l) with primarily short journeys.

Newer cars must do 40mpg as a minimum, surely?

~~~
bzbarsky
Newer cars tend to be larger and heavier than older cars, which does not help
fuel efficiency.

For the US specifically,
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/03/climate/us-
fu...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/03/climate/us-fuel-
economy.html) says that in 2016 new "cars and light trucks (i.e. SUVs)" in the
US average 24.7 mpg. Based on the charts, restricting to just cars gives you
something like 36mpg in the US in 2016. Note that the EU number is much higher
at ~46mpg, likely due to the cars being on average smaller.

Though I'm not sure what to make of the fact that the charts seem to show both
cars _and_ light trucks at above 25mpg for the US in 2016; hard to reconcile
that with the 24.7 number.

Also see the note about how SUVs and vans are considered "cars" in the EU but
"light trucks" in the US...

Anyway, the upshot is that it's certainly possible to get something that will
get you over 40mpg, but the average is below that even for new vehicles, in
the US.

------
manigandham
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.

~~~
Tepix
A few years ago I thought the same. These days Flugscham/Flygskam should stop
you from flying everywhere, all the time.

------
markvdb
Reminds me of Max-Hervé George and his fund investment contract:

[http://archive.is/jkb0x](http://archive.is/jkb0x)

------
hmmhm
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.

------
j7ake
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?

~~~
uptown
Anything with a “lifetime” option is worth evaluating. I’ve come out way ahead
on plans that are pricey up-front but easily pay off longer-term if you plan
to remain a user of that service or product.

~~~
j7ake
Yes. The only risk is the potential bankruptcy or revoking of life time
privileges. Otherwise it’s often a good deal.

------
rkagerer
The decent thing to do would have been to give him a warning first, before
they suddenly revoked the pass.

------
jmkni
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?

~~~
dmurray
People's luggage goes to the wrong city all the time, thanks to mistakes by
airlines or baggage handlers. The policy is that the passenger can't book his
luggage on one flight and then opt not to take it, not that they will never
take unaccompanied luggage.

~~~
jmkni
Cool good to know, I just remember hearing something like that on an episode
of Air Crash Investigation so it jumped out at me.

------
Latteland
Did they terminate other people's tickets? The interesting article does
mention booking the extra seat and not using it.

~~~
dmitrygr
A number of other people have their tickets terminated for similar reasons.
Google the name of the program to find their stories

------
4ntonius8lock
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'.

------
DebtDeflation
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.

------
dkersten
> 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.

------
dang
Previous AAirpass thread (2012):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12802751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12802751).

I think there were others?

------
ganesh7
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.

------
rabidrat
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?

~~~
anticristi
I'm also finding it difficult to empathize with the trauma. Seems like he
traveled to Agra, India, so he must have met people that are not only below
the flight line, but that will not and cannot leave a 10km circle for the rest
of their lifes.

Personally, I have bound with people below the flight line and ever since I
cherish every flight I take, although it's in economy class and I have to pay
for it.

~~~
djmips
I have empathy for the loss of his son. The pain of ticket loss is harder for
me to feel but I get it that people grow accustomed to their place no matter
what level and a sudden fall will hurt and bring on depression even if where
they land is actually better than 90% of the rest of the population.

