sued American Airlines for $7 million today, claiming that the airlines illegally revoked his lifetime passes. The airlines seemed to have revoked the passes in December 2008 claiming that he was fraudulently using them.
Steven Rothstein paid American Airlines $250,000 to be able to fly first class anywhere for the rest of his life. Two years later he paid an addition $150,000 to take a companion with him.
It might be possible that he used his pass for speculative bookings and would cancel it at the last moment which is a nightmare of an airline.
There are lot of problems with airlines with regards to speculative booking. American Airlines has the following policies on its website -
Policies
Duplicate Bookings – AA will monitor booking activity at the travel agent level in order to identify duplicate bookings. American Airlines definition of a duplicate booking is the use of the same passenger name for an additional flight for the same market, date, IATA number, regardless of flight number, class of service or status code. You should never book duplicate space, as this is a waste of your time and a loss to us.
Fictitious Bookings – Fictitious bookings could include those with name field items that read test / traveler / tourist or a surname with fictitious initials, i.e. A / B / C / D / E. Please avoid the practice of holding space under speculative passenger names. We will monitor booking activity at the travel agent level in order to identify fictitious bookings.
Isn’t it a bt expensive to pay 250,000 to travel anywhere for the rest of life?
Highland Club,
Not really!
Couple of things -
- The tickets are first class. Flying international on first class can be anywhere between 5k – 15k per way.
- Domestic first class tickets can be between 500-2k
- With the above two, if you fly once a month domestic and 4-5 times international, you can easily top 50k a year.
- If you live 50 more years, then all you need to do is fly $5000 per year (neglecting inflation) or $10-15k per year (adding inflation)
That I agree. Too expensive, the $ 250 000 not. He lives so many years and if you travel a lot, there can be honest to the positive than to negative with time.
Nevertheless, it is not necessary to the airline so annoying, because they certainly have to do more than just a passenger to take care of.