r/CaughtMyEye • u/detectiverobert • 1d ago
In 1987, Steve Rothstein bought a lifetime unlimited first-class American Airlines pass for $250,000. He took over 10,000 flights, costing the airline an estimated $21 million. In 2008, American Airlines terminated his pass, accusing him of fraud for booking flights under fake names.
34
u/Wonderful_Pomelo95 1d ago edited 1d ago
That's over 1.3 flights per day for 21 years straight. Either this man was a lunatic that lived a nightmare lifestyle, or this numbers are not right
54
u/Agitated_Winner9568 1d ago
One of the things he did is booking seats in multiple planes departing the same day at different times so he could come to the airport at any time and have a plane ready.
Unlike economy, airlines don’t overbook first class so it was a massive loss for them to have empty seats because of him.
38
u/Ashmizen 1d ago
I think that is probably worse than the fake names.
If it’s unlimited then unlimited is fine but like a buffet you have to eat what you order.
Ordering multiple seats flying at the same time is impossible and clearly fraud.
6
u/Hammy_cashews 1d ago
its not fraud if it isn't written into the contract.
if that was fraud they wouldn't have let him do it for 20 years before catching him on the other thing.
They knew it was a huge loss for them because they tried buying it back from him multiple times over the years i saw in a different article.
12
u/StayTheFool 1d ago
See? That's pretty dumb. This story is definitely cherry picked in favor of the guy
3
u/Zeppelanoid 1d ago
Sounds like he did everything he could to piss off the airline and they eventually got him on a technicality
1
13
u/jollydoody 1d ago
Oh they most certainly have overbooked first class. Maybe not as common but I’ve seen it and when privilege + expectations meet not everyone gets a seat, Lordy do people get angry.
6
u/HotDerivative 1d ago
Just was reading about folks getting booted off Polaris during boarding because they oversold.
1
u/johnnyslick 1d ago
Yeah I think it’s more the case that an 80 seat plane will have more instances of overbooking the 74 coach and business class seats than the 6 first class ones. If there are 7 people expecting to fly in 6 seats in first class they might not even put that on the boarding screen (and just call that person to the reception desk personally). Also of course first class gets booked at a different rate than other classes and a plane that’s sold out in coach might well not be sold out in first class.
5
u/ellefleming 1d ago
But he still didn't do anything actually illegal. Did he outthink them? Yes. Did he break his contract? No.
14
u/dethskwirl 1d ago
he did. he was allowing people to use his free guest pass without him also flying on the same plane. that was the rule that he broke and they got him on.
6
u/SueForPeas 1d ago
You’ve read the contract?
3
0
u/legal_stylist 1d ago
The courts did it for us. Moreover, look at the filings in the lawsuit. He didn’t deny that he broke the contract—his argument (rejected, by the way) is that because they tolerated his various violations of the contract thereby inducing his reliance on the new terms such that they should be estopped from enforcing the original terms, or, in the alternative, that the course of performance between the parties supplanted the agreement’s original terms.
As you might imagine, this argument didn’t work and the matter was settled whereby he gave up his pass and received nothing.
There’s no debate he broke the contract.
65
u/Legionatus 1d ago
This story is usually presented as picking on the little guy.
This character booked hundreds of flights in advance that he didn't even take because he "loved flying" and wanted them available. American was paying a ton of money for empty seats and this guy's eccentricity.
10
u/RoutineCloud5993 1d ago
He was also selling seats to other people and not flying with them, which was against the terms of the agreement
70
u/briellebabylol 1d ago
I still don’t care about the corporation here. They offered a thing and he bought it 🤷🏿♀️
24
u/Legionatus 1d ago
You don't need to care about the corporation. The legal system frowns on fraud, so he lost the pass. There isn't an issue here.
16
u/Turbulent-Prior-2253 1d ago
Exactly. Admitting this guy was a "victim" of FAFO doesn't mean you suddenly root for the corporation. Guy had a contract, guy violated the contract repeatedly, eventually the airline had enough and voided the contract.
Both sides in a dispute can suck, and sometimes a party you dislike is still in the right.
9
u/NotYourGa1Friday 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think we have to take the timeline into consideration.
Before 9/11, you didn't need to show a boarding pass or a photo ID to walk through the metal detectors. Anyone could walk right up to the departure gate to say goodbye.
When it was time to board the plane, the gate agent only checked that you had a valid physical ticket for that flight. I think the only time pre-9/11 that I was asked for an ID at boarding was on international flights and even that was more of a perfunctory check to make sure I had my passport on me.
In the 80s and 90s there was a kind of booming secondary market for airline tickets. Airlines introduced “non-refundable” tickets that were worth $0 if you missed your flight. So if you had a change in plans, were sick, had an emergency, etc it was normal to transfer your ticket. The classifieds (a portion of the newspaper for ads made by people rather than companies—Craigslist but a physical newspaper) were full of ads for airline tickets.
While the back of most if not all airline tickets said, “non transferable” this did not make it illegal to transfer the ticket; and if you took the time to update the ticket at the counter with the name of the passenger then you were golden- by changing the name on the ticket, which only the airline could do, the airline facilitated and by default authorized the transfer.
So, from the time he bought this until 2001, buying tickets under names like “bag” or “guest” was not unheard of. Airlines were aware of the secondary market for airline tickets and checking an ID was simply not part of the process.
Obviously, post-9/11 rules changed. I’m curious to know if he kept booking with the placeholder names or if he did that pre-9/11 but the airline used it as an excuse to nullify the ticket.
Frankly, even if he did book under a bogus name, if the airline was updating tickets for him, allowing him to keep doing what he had been doing, he might not have realized that there was an issue.
Was he eccentric? Yes. But if he bought the pass, and the pass allowed for an extra seat then can we fault him for using the pass to its fullest extent?
The pass was meant as a joke, so the terms and conditions were probably weak—if they existed at all. This feels less like FAFO and more like the airline making their bed and refusing to sleep in it.
Apparently he was booking flights for other people and then not flying with them, which did break terms.
1
u/Boeing367-80 22h ago
It wasn't normal as such, it was still against the rules, but it was possible. I onetime flew on a ticket in a woman's name - Brenda. I was challenged once, scowled and said "Brendan!". They laughed and didn't hassle me further.
At one time some airlines had FF tickets that were transferable - I know a guy who put himself thru undergrad selling those. Northwest onetime would send you a "Flywrite" FF tickets that you could basically write in anyone's name.
You have to remember that top performers rarely go into the airline biz. Airline execs are typically not the best and the brightest and in the 1980s and 1990s you had a lot of holdovers from the regulated era of the airline biz when regulators suppressed competition to ensure they all stayed in business - quasi utilities. So they did a lot of boneheaded things, many of which could be ruthlessly exploited by alert consumers.
Bob Crandall, who, for better or worse, basically invented the modern airline business in the 1980s at American Airlines, was so prominent because he was genuinely smart and innovative in a business that was largely devoid of such people. FF programs - he invented it. Yield management, he invented it, etc. A lot of later generation execs worked for Crandall.
7
1
-2
2
1
6
u/jfanderson05 1d ago
Im pretty sure he would book flights to Europe just have a pass to the lounge and eat for free. Then not go to Europe lol.
5
u/VERlFlEDaccount 1d ago
I have no clue but hard to believe there wasn’t some stipulation that you can’t just book endlessly and miss tons of flights
1
15
u/9447044 1d ago
We got a free upgrade to first class on a Embraer. It was over $1200 for 8 hours of flight time ( 2 people, 2 hour flight, round trip)
My parents went to southeast Asia and their buisness class tickets were like 5k each.
I love when people cant even imagine the future could be that much more expensive
8
u/Turbulent-Prior-2253 1d ago
He was clearly abusing the pass and they terminated him for the abuse.
I don’t see the issue here.
6
u/mapleisthesky 1d ago
Well, he fronted 350k in 1987. Compounded interest on that is probably massive, so "costed millions" is a moot argument. However, using fake names to secure the seats does sound shady especially after 9/11. He could've kept going, or invited anybody as long as they are real.
3
u/Fit-Monk8087 1d ago
350k in 1987 to now is about a million dollars, a pretty substantial difference than 21mn
5
u/needaburn 1d ago
They said compound interest, not inflation.
In the S&P 500, that is worth $22,938,792 today
2
u/RedWinger7 1d ago
It’s like 1.7 mil at 8% returns. 2.5mil at 10%. Though after the 2008 crash the portfolio would have probably dropped below 1.4mil if you were invested in stocks allowing a 10% gain previously
2
u/needaburn 1d ago
The S&P has grown 6454% since 1987. How are you getting $1.7 mil? Even at 8%, it would be $7M
1
u/TheRightKost 1d ago edited 1d ago
He lost the pass in 2008, not today. The $21M loss was therefore incurred from 1987-2008, so the relevant number is how much the S&P grew during that timeframe, not including the 18 years of growth that has occurred since.
And really the S&P isn't a great benchmark for this since there's additional risk needing to be taken to get those returns. Risk-free rate growth (i.e. US Treasuries), or whatever American Airlines return on capital was, over that timeframe would be better benchmarks.
1
1
3
u/johnnyslick 1d ago
I mean, this also wasn’t really costing the airliner 21M. Sure, every time someone was unable to fly first class because he’d booked a seat, they were out that money, but that’s not even going to be every flight, and beyond that the extra costs associated with having a person no-show are likely negligible (a tiiiiiny difference in the fuel calculation, an extra meal that gets tossed, etc).
Not saying the guy wasn’t way overdoing the terms of the deal but I don’t think the airline actually made out that badly. If the guy wasn’t way overdoing less brazen, maybe he’d still have the perk today.
2
1
3
3
u/IamJusticus 22h ago
How in the world did they lose $21 million from him taking flights? Were they chartering Air Force One every time he wanted to fly?
Can someone explain how one man taking up one seat, not matter how many flights they took, added up to $21 million in losses?
0
u/AddictedToOxygen 21h ago
He had a companion ticket also. That's 20k flight tickets theoretically. 21m/20k is ~1k average per first class ticket. Math seems very reasonable, especially given first class tickets are like 10k each nowadays.
2
u/jdelta85 16h ago
MAAAAYBE Long Haul International First/Biz class lie flat seat RT. MAYBE. Depends on the route. A domestic AA first class seat is nowhere remotely close to $10k dude lol
1
u/Any-Worldliness-679 15h ago
Actually, some absolutely are. I've seen LAX-JFK First Class (not business, FIRST), that were listed at over $10k, one way. Lots of celebrities carried in that cabin.
1
u/account_not_valid 14h ago
Add in that there were probably many flights that he booked and then didn't turn up for.
1
u/EnvironmentalOwl4361 10h ago
My business travel costs over 10k/ticket routinely.
1
u/MaleficentPapaya4768 9h ago
Well now I feel better about my $350 commuter flight between Seattle and San Francisco.
1
u/Early_Money2576 31m ago
He also booked multiple flights to the same destination, so he can arrive at the airport at any point and have a flight ready. When he doenst show up for those flights, airline was losing money on those too.
0
u/IamJusticus 21h ago
That makes sense, and that's my bad. I'm so stuck in my little bubble that my mind wasn't even considering the cost of traveling overseas.
Dumb of him to throw try to scam an already good deal, but sounds like he got his money out of it in the long run.
4
u/CallMeGlarthir 1d ago
Jesus.. How much radiation was this guy exposed to?
11
5
u/romastra 1d ago edited 1h ago
Ionizing radiation effect is overvalued in folks minds.
2
u/blind_blake_2023 1d ago
Flgiht crews average 3 to 6 mSv per year—an amount higher than many terrestrial nuclear power plant technicians. It's clealy undervalued in your mind... Studies show flight crews experience higher rates of radiation-related cancer deaths due to this repeated cumulative exposure.
1
u/romastra 1d ago edited 1d ago
Radiation caused cancer is diagnosted more often within flight crews, you're right. But I'm not arguing with this. :D
I meant people overvalue the impact of that radiation to their lives.
In the well‑known Scandinavian study, 10,032 pilots were followed for 17 years. During this time, 466 cases of cancer were identified in them, while, according to the average statistics for ordinary citizens, 456 cases were expected.
Why? Hypotetically, they don't smoke, have no food obsessions, etc, etc…
So, that radiation impact is not more dangerous than a "regular" live. And if people don't bother on their live style impact why should they do that for radiation?
1
u/CheesyElefante 5h ago
Ionizing radiation, not ionic. Ionizing radiation means the particles have enough energy to ionize atoms and includes particles that are not ions.
Following the principles of ALARA, wouldn’t you want as little dose as possible regardless if you smoke or not? Assume a linear relationship between cancer risk and dose - let’s not argue the hypothetical of if hormesis is real or not. General population gets ~ 0.5 mSv or so, so flight crews are getting 6-12 times as much dose per year.
1
u/romastra 1h ago
Thank you for drawing attention to the slip. I’m happy with how Reddit corrects inaccuracies. Hope, this doesn't make the rest of the text unreadable.
How does your appeal to the amount of absorbed radiation make my statement wrong?
I never argue against the numbers. But people still pay way too much attention to the radiation danger in comparison to their life style problems.
Of course, you shouldn’t have items in your home that are highly radioactive. But you shouldn’t worry about this more than you worry about a sedentary lifestyle and smoking.
If you’re not satisfied with the statistics on pilots provided above, you might be interested in Japanese studies on life expectancy among survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Spoiler: the difference in life expectancy turned out to be virtually negligible, even though they additionally received almost a year’s worth of pilot’s dose AT ONCE.
The only justified concern is for kids: while a body grows, it's more prominent to mutations caused by radiation. And again, kids are more prominent to the rest of the mentioned factors too.
2
2
2
2
2
u/g_rich 1d ago
Costing the airline $21 million assumes all flights were 100% full and all 1st class tickets sold at full price. That’s like saying someone who got bumped to first class cost the airline $10k; if the seat was empty to begin with at most it cost the airline whatever the cost of the meal was.
If I remember correctly what ended up getting his pass terminated was booking the companion seat under a fictitious name and that seat being a no show.
2
u/PG2009 1d ago
When I first heard about this guy a couple years ago, I thought they screwed him...but the more I read about the story, the more it sounds like the airline put up with a lot of shit before justifiably canceling his pass.
From his perspective, he must've known he was a thorn in their side and they were looking for an excuse to cancel his pass, right? So was it just a case of "I've got away with this behavior so far, so why not keep doing it?"
2
u/Froggy2345 21h ago
How did he amass more than 10,000 flights in 21 years (1987-2008) which is 7,665 days. I understand about a connecting flight would count as another flight, but when he flew somewhere, didn’t he stay for a day or two. He would literally be flying more than a flight a day for 21 straight years???
1
u/RaiseNo9690 20h ago
- Companion flight ticket
- Someone said he sometimes flew to another city for lunch and returned home for dinner.
1
1
u/BarryTheBystander 15h ago
Ya this is bs. That would be a flight every day for over 27 years. Even with a companion that makes no sense
1
u/Delicious_Aside_9310 11h ago
In another comment someone said he’d apparently book multiple flights on the days he wished to fly so he could take whichever was most convenient. So some days he might have taken two flight but booked 8.
2
2
u/wonkotsane42 1d ago
Wait...if he booked using a name that wasn't his then how could he get a free flight that he was entitled to without using his name?
3
2
u/JediM4sterChief 1d ago
It was the companion seat. He'd basically book it not knowing if anyone was joining him, so he made up a name to reserve the extra seat
1
1
u/d3pl0rable_1nf1del 1d ago
I already didn’t want to spend $400K on two lifetime airplane seats, you didn’t have to sell me so hard on it.
1
1
u/Ok-Description-4640 1d ago
I worked for American in the 90s. We heard about these passes and even then we couldn’t believe how great a deal that was. I think they sold only a small number of these passes and before long started looking for ways to take them away from people, finding any sort of technical breach in the contracts to void them.
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Mundane-Detective861 1d ago
Lol why would he need to use fake names if he has lifetime unlimited? Also, how would he use fake names to fly in 2008?
1
u/exipheas 1d ago
I think it was for companion seats to keep the seat next to him open.
1
u/Mundane-Detective861 1d ago
Wait, you're right. He can book and the fake person doesn't have to show up. I get it now.
1
u/Shmokeshbutt 22h ago
First class seat was already spacious enough and he still wanted an open seat next to him?
Dude got greedy
1
u/CuriousOK 20h ago
If you’d read the comment OP posted, you’d see that he’d use his companion seat to help stranded travelers. He used a fake name because there was no way to know who he might be helping.
1
1
1
1
u/Visual-Chemist-6397 18h ago
I guess American Airlines discovered the downside of unlimited capitalism.
1
1
1
1
0
0
•
u/detectiverobert 1d ago
In 1987, American Steve Rothstein purchased a lifetime unlimited-travel pass from American Airlines for $250,000, along with a companion ticket for an additional $150,000. The pass allowed him to fly whenever he wanted, and he eventually took more than 10,000 flights covering over 10 million miles.
Rothstein used the pass to travel for everything from baseball games and sandwiches to overseas trips. Sometimes, he flew to another city just for lunch and returned home in time for dinner. He also used his travel privileges to help strangers, offering his companion seat to stranded travelers and giving away millions of frequent-flyer miles.
However, in December 2008, his extraordinary flying privileges came to an abrupt end. While checking in at Chicago O’Hare International Airport with a friend, Rothstein was handed a letter informing him that American Airlines had terminated his pass over alleged fraudulent activity. The airline accused him of booking flights under fake names, including “Bag Rothstein,” when he did not know who would accompany him.
Rothstein was devastated and filed a lawsuit to regain his pass. However, a federal judge ruled against him because of his use of false names, and he appealed the decision. Despite having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the passes, Rothstein maintained that the airline had broken its contract and continued fighting to restore his lifetime travel privileges.