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Comment by tomnipotent | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

>> 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.

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.

> 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.

I just want to chime in here and point out that the exit clause in the contract required fraudulent usage. American was certainly getting royally screwed by the deal they made, and the pattern of Rothstein's reservations and cancellations was certainly not normal. But what took thousands of billable hours for lawyers to resolve seems to be specifically whether his behavior rose to the level of fraud.

So what? There was no abuse clause, and abuse is not fraud.

> Bad faith?

"Bag Rothstein"

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Booking tickets under fake names, whether for your luggage or for random people you may meet at the airport and want to travel with, is fraud. Full stop.

Fraud requires you to deceive people. If AA tell you to book under a fake name for the spare seat, you do it, and then they cheerfully watch you walk on with whoever, that's not fraud. They know exactly what's happening.

an AA phone operator is not the same as an AA legal representative. they can make mistakes.

> If AA tell you

besides, the sentence touches explicitly on this claim

" paragraph 17(d) of the AAirpass Agreement is clear: “American’s failure to enforce any of its rights under this Agreement shall not constitute a waiverof such rights,” "

which is pretty much standard if you ask me. tolerance doesn't constitute acceptance and there was a warning about this, which he tried worked around using real names of relatives that then didn't travel for the vast majority of bookings, making further claim of ignorance tenuous at best and dubious in general.

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?

This guy was a stockbroker, not some random barista. He knew what he wanted and how to ask for it. Trying to pretend that travel agents did this all on his behalf and he's just a poor victim is naive.

If I ask airline personnel to book me an empty seat on my free ticket and they say ‘sure sir, no problem!’ what exactly am I supposed to think went wrong?

If I have a $500,000 golden ticket that I’ve built my entire identity and life around, I’m not going to trust some random ticket agent who’s just trying to get me off the phone.

He didn't deal with random ticket agents. Lifetime pass holders call a dedicated number just for them. Those answering knew who he was and he knew them by name.

If you have the American Express Black Card, sure. These customers were handled by the standard Executive Platinum team.

Are you sure? I've been AirPass before and we book through different agents. Same when ConciergeKey wasn't a published benefit.

Per the article, he very much knew all the personnel by name, to the point of sending them gifts and calling his "friends" to talk about anything and everything when feeling depressed.

He didn't place his trust in ticket agents (though his were far from random). He had a handwritten letter from CEO Robert Crandall: "I am delighted that you’ve enjoyed your AAirpass investment — you can count on us to keep the Company solid, and to honor the deal, far into the future."

The CEO wrote him a letter saying, “Sure, go ahead and book an empty seat for your suitcase under the name Bag Rothstein”? Because if not, it sure sounds like he put his trust in ticket agents.

I mean, I wouldn’t trust a ticket agent to manage my finances, but you kind of have to assume they know how to do the one thing they were hired to.

Just different risk tolerances I guess. If I had spent $500k on something that could be worth $10+ million, I wouldn't take a risk based on the word of a front-desk person.

My belief is that this guy truly knew he was in the wrong and did it anyway because he thought he could get away with it. Classic rich guy move that came back to bite him.

Aside from the booking staff, who could he reasonably have expected to advise him? The only people who could actually say if AA considered this behavior abusive would be members of the airline's legal staff of senior management. Any other attorney or other form of advisor can't possibly definitely state what AA would consider abuse.

These aren't random front-desk booking agents, they're high up enough in the chain of command to deal with customers like the unlimited pass holders. Who else could he have trusted to tell him if the behavior would constitute fraud in America's opinion?

The legal requirements for a party to make an adverse decision is low, it just has to be non-arbitrary to prevent it from being judged on the merits. At which point whichever party has the greater resources would be most likely to win.

When dealing with a corporation, you are at their mercy, and the most immediate defense is whatever PR problems you can cause them.

Well the people so far up in the chain of command clearly advised him incorrectly so that argument doesn’t hold water.

Again, if I’m risking $5+ million I FIND SOMEONE TO ADVISE ME. Dude’s a Bear Stearns trader with money to burn, you’re telling me he has no way to get ahold of the airline’s legal staff or senior management?

And also again, the reason this guy took their word for it is that he knew he was angle-shooting and thought it wouldn’t come back to bite him.

Of course, that was during a time when a promise like that still meant something. And by the time they decided to renege he was long gone.

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.

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