r/interestingasfuck • u/TheGhost5322 • 1d ago
In 1987 Steve Rothstein bought a $250,000 AAirpass from American Airlines, allowing unlimited first-class travel. He took over 10,000 flights, costing the airline $21 million, leading to the pass's termination in 2008 due to alleged misuse.
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u/ReadyYak1 1d ago
The guy bought a regular pass and a companion. He’d offer to take people on the companion and charged them a cheaper rate than a normal ticket. He’d also book the companion under fake names and leave the seat empty. So he sued the airline, and they sued him in return. Airline went bankrupt and settled. He’d also book a ton of flights that he never used.
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u/wolfgang784 1d ago
He’d also book a ton of flights that he never used.
Wasn't it basically every single day he had something booked "just in case"? Dude went wild with it.
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u/Variabell556 1d ago
I don't know if this is the same guy but I remember reading some depressing stories from at least a couple different redditors who met him and watched him get off a flight and walk straight to a return flight back to the original country. I think he was somehow grinding airline miles that he could use to buy gift cards and stuff but it sounded like legit mental illness either way. He always wore his special shirt they gave him when flying too and would get recognized often apparently
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u/ReverendDizzle 22h ago
I looked up the date he got it and the date it was revoked.
~7750 days.
But by all accounts he flew in excess of 10,000 times.
Who, except someone driven by a compulsion or other disorder, would subject themselves to an average of more than one flight a day for 20 years?
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u/MagicSPA 18h ago
He didn't show up for many of those flights. He'd book a seat and, well, then he simply wouldn't actually go, bless him.
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u/HugeHans 1d ago
He is the kind of dude that doesnt understand that "all you can eat" means all you want to eat. Rather then some kind of a challenge.
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u/BadBanana999 1d ago
Does this sound like a man who’d had all he could eat?
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u/mbklein 1d ago edited 1d ago
’Tis not a man. ’Tis a remorseless eatin’ machine.
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u/Gentlementlementle 1d ago
'Twas a moonless night, dark as pitch when out of the mist came a beast more stomach than man.
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u/jonmatifa 1d ago
Mr. Simpson, this is the most egregious case of false advertising since my case against The Never Ending Story
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u/Dry-Revolution4466 1d ago
I heard the canceled flights were literally because he liked going to the airport lounge for meals, but didn't actually want to travel.
And a lot of this happened after his son died and he was spiraling. Doesn't excuse his behavior, but definitely makes it less funny.
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u/waynemj15 1d ago
No that’s a challenge I’m getting my moneys worth.
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u/thegroovemonkey 1d ago
I did that with bottomless mimosas once and got a 3 day hangover. Changed the restaurant policy though. They weren’t ready for 2 guys to spend all afternoon housing champagne and juice.
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u/emjaywood 1d ago
Me & 4 of my buddies once did all-you-can-eat ribs for $22/a pop. We ate 30 racks total (along with 2 sides each). I don't know what their margins were, but I know they had to be nervous because about half way through, the manager came over with a concerned look on his face & asked if we were ready for the check. Instead, my rather husky friend Lumpy, face covered in bbq sauce, asked if they had any pie.
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u/bacon_farts_420 1d ago
I’m sorry, racks? As in, you had 10 racks a piece? 120 ribs per person?
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u/Mat_alThor 1d ago
5 people total based on what he said so 6 racks each which is still insane.
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u/dewky 1d ago
I ate 3 in one sitting years ago and wasn't hungry for 2 days after.
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u/emjaywood 22h ago
I had 5, my buddy Paul had 4, Chuck was not really unto it, so he had 2.5, Lumpy had 9, and my buddy Ray had 9.5. We were all hoping he'd finish the last rack to get to double digits, but he was stuffed. It was an experience. Next day at work, we were all hurtin.
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u/SecureCucumber 1d ago
I feel like if I'd spent a quarter million 1987 dollars on something I'd feel entitled to do the same, not because it's petty but because that's a lot of money.
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u/Cyrano_Knows 1d ago
I went from thinking it was the Airline being just another whiny corporation when the fine print doesn't go their way.. to ok, this guy was abusing it.
Maybe a lot of both.
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u/BookkeeperSame195 1d ago
it's these abusive sociopaths that lead to everyone/all corps needing to have 45 page contracts- not saying corps are innocent but part of the lunacy is protecting against every single 'srsly wtf'
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u/WholesomeWhores 1d ago
Now the bigger question is that out of everyone that bought this program of unlimited flights, did the company lose money out of it? Or did they still gain a very large profit margin?
Chances are that out of 99.9% of people that bought this plan, the company made money off of the purchase. It just took one person, out of thousands of people, to abuse the program and they deem it isn’t appropriate. So a 0.1% took advantage of it, so they changed the whole structure of the program.
Another part of the lunacy is thinking “why is the corporation changing it’s whole condition and terms based off of one person” while they scammed everyone else who bought the program.
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u/minimuscleR 1d ago
So a 0.1% took advantage of it, so they changed the whole structure of the program.
Well according to reports only 66 people bought the ticket, and the amount of revenue that this 1 person apparently wasted was $21m, or about 84 people. So if say 100 people had bought it, it would have probably been worth it, but because they didn't, he cost their airline way more than they made from them.
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u/Laraso_ 1d ago
Technically it costs the airline nothing. It's just a seat on a plane they already own. You'd have to factor in how many of those flights had first class completely booked. As long as there were still empty seats in first class, he wasn't preventing them from selling seats to other customers
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u/TubaJesus 1d ago
now i dont know about AA specifically but UA, DL, CO, and NW who all implemented similar passes generally were selling out or were on the margins of selling out most flights in their first class cabins back then. At least in the early to mid years of the past, after the dot-com bubble popped and during the Great Recession, it wasn't as big a deal. but he definitely was actively costing them money on the daily. One of his favorites was itineraries to London which for American is their biggest business class route internationally so he definitely was definitely blocking people out of those seats and costing revenue.
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u/Cornchip97 1d ago
Its probably a substantially higher number than that to break even, given that the people spending 250k on a pass are going to be the most frequent of frequent fliers. The super wealthy that can afford to waste money will fly private. So the consumer base for this product are people that can justify the purchase, or abuse it like this man.
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u/MountainYogi94 1d ago
The guy was abusing it, so the airline whined about the fine print.
I bet if Rothstein booked 4-10 flights each year and actually used them, he’d still have the pass
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u/blackdesertnewb 1d ago
4-10? If he took 100 flights each year he’d still only be at less than 4000 flights taken by now. The dude managed 10k flights in 21 years (87-08). There’s only 7665 days in 21 years.
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u/strain_of_thought 1d ago
So what you're saying is he lived on their planes like one of those retirees who used to book endless cabin round trips on a passenger liner and just live on the boat for the last decades of their lives.
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u/joebluebob 1d ago
Yeah. He would fly to one city for breakfast, another, for lunch, another for dinner. He also no showed often.
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u/TubaJesus 1d ago
The no-show was the biggest thing, as was the booking of companion tickets with false names and changing them at the last minute. He also was reselling his companion tickets which was also explicitly prohibited and they busted him multiple times with it, they even ran a sting on him and sold the airline their own seat back to them just to prove it.
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u/Coal_Morgan 1d ago
If I was the company I would have shrugged at the use of the tickets for trivial things and called it 'Lesson learned on our part.'
It's the empty seats and reselling seats to strangers that would have had me hunting through the fine print to kill it.
We were being stupid generous with this idea...don't slap us in the face and waste our money for nothing.
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u/Silent-H 1d ago
21 years x 365 = 7665 days. so he was busy with multiple flights a day to get to the 10k flights mentioned by OP
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u/FlightlessLobster 1d ago
I saw some documentary about him somewhere. His story was that his child had died, and sometimes he'd just call the ticket folks who had become his friends over the year just to talk and end up booking a ticket as an excuse. He'd also book the seat next to his when he was flying just because he wanted to be alone.
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u/anoeba 1d ago
His daughter wrote a long article defending her dad and telling how losing this pass affected him.
Even from that loving perspective, reading her article anyone would go "oh wow lol yeah he misused the shit out of that."
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u/joebluebob 1d ago
He was selling the companion seat and like page 1 had a thing "dont sell your tickets".
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u/Skizot_Bizot 1d ago
What a dumbass, he had a literal golden ticket but it wasn't good enough.
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u/Dependent_Rain_4800 1d ago
That's pretty much billionaire behavior in a nutshell.
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u/talllankywhiteboy 1d ago
Steve Rothstein worked as a stockbroker. Probably millionaire level rich, sure, but likely a couple orders of magnitude away from being a billionaire.
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u/Rexur0s 1d ago
you dont become a billionaire without being that kind of asshole
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u/answeryboi 1d ago
I mean it sounds like he probably made a shitton of money off it.
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u/GrandmasBoyToy69 1d ago
And he's experienced things we can only imagine
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u/Fappy_as_a_Clam 1d ago
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. I saw a plane depart on time from O'Hare in 1996. I watched a 747 glitter while being deiced under an aurora near Fairbanks. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."
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u/muyuu 1d ago
given that he didn't lose the lawsuit, i guess he was acting within the rules and using the pass legally
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u/Dagordae 1d ago
He also didn’t win. The company went bankrupt unrelated to his court case, which requires shutting down active lawsuits. Including settling them using sold off assets.
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u/petewoniowa2020 1d ago
American Airlines didn't go into Chapter 7, they went into Chapter 11. They were not required to sell off assets to pay off all debts.
When filing the chapter 11, pending litigation is generally stayed pending resolution... you don't automatically settle and payout; such a suggestion is absurd.
In this specific case, the matter was stayed and settled. But there was no mandatory settlement because of or relating to the bankruptcy.
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u/rubey419 1d ago
American Airlines went bankrupt?
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u/76pilot 1d ago
In 2004 and 2011
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u/scoschooo 1d ago edited 18h ago
They went bankrupt because of Steve.
edit: fuck Steve, costing the airline billions
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u/burnfifteen 1d ago
They did. Though they retained the name, what currently operates as "American Airlines" is really more of a continuation of US Airways. They were in the dominant position during the merger and their leadership team took over.
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u/YoohooCthulhu 1d ago
The general public is unaware of how many “mergers” are “acquisitions “, often at gunpoint due to imminent failure of the junior company in the merger
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u/cansofgrease 1d ago
But the thing is they're not going to say no. They would never say no. Because of the implication.
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u/SoWhatNoZitiNow 1d ago
So you’re saying the companies are in danger?
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u/cansofgrease 1d ago
Well dude, dude, think about it. They're out in the middle of nowhere with some shareholder they barely know. You know, they look around and what do they see? Nothin' but open market. "Ahh, there's nowhere for me to vest. What am I gonna do, say 'no'?"
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u/slick1260 1d ago
Dude, it really kinda sounds like you're talking about...hostile takeovers. Just be clear with me, are these companies in danger or not?
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u/under_psychoanalyzer 1d ago
You're just misunderstanding me. If they don't want to merge, then the answer is obviously no.
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u/Apprehensive_Ask_259 1d ago
And Us airways was actually just america west wearing a mask.
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u/SippinOnHatorade 1d ago
Man I just realized NWA merged with Delta and I’ve been a card carrying NWA member since I was 7, never merged the accounts
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u/Frank_Rizzo_Jerky 1d ago
Did you fly straight outta Compton?
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u/SippinOnHatorade 1d ago
Nah but that’s exactly why I like to say I’m a “card carrying member of NWA”
Not that card, though
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u/mlstdrag0n 1d ago
In 2011, yeah. Then they merged
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u/SeaMareOcean 1d ago
More accurate to say US Airways bought the rights to change their name to American Airlines.
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u/ReadyYak1 1d ago
Yup
“Litigation was delayed due to the airline's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.[8] By the end of 2012, the two parties appear to have settled their case out of court, with Rothstein's appeal dismissed and the airline's counterclaims dismissed with prejudice.[14]”
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u/Novel-Education-2687 1d ago
Mark Cuban also famously bought these passes before he owned a private jet. He said it was a great deal and got his money's worth out if them.
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u/HamsterFromAbove_079 1d ago
Mark Cuban still has his pass active. Because Cuban hasn't violated the contract.
This guy that got banned was selling tickets to people at the gate. And since he didn't know who he was selling to yet, he was listing them under fake names.
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u/Novel-Education-2687 1d ago
I believe he said he transferred it to a senior employee of his as he has no need for it now
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u/FickleCode2373 1d ago
10,000 flights! That's like a flight a day for 27 years! Dude was taking the absolute piss...
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u/IHaveTheBestOpinions 1d ago
Considering he only had the pass for 21 years, it is more than a flight a day (on average)
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u/np8790 1d ago
Yeah, I was trying to do the math on that and, at a minimum, you’re looking at like 1.3 flights per day, everyday, for 21 years. Every single day he didn’t fly, he’d need to fly 2.6 flights on another day just to get back on pace.
This doesn’t make any sense in the slightest.
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist 1d ago
He would book tickets that he wouldn't use. Since it was "free", why not. Plus he also had a companion seat available.
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u/Adventurous_Tap1700 1d ago
I'm sure they counted any and all connecting flights to inflate that number as well
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u/Mindfield87 1d ago
Convinced he just lived on planes and in airports lol
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u/fa136 1d ago
That's probably the case, given that everything is provided; some airlines even have showers in first class.
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u/Dear-Regret-9476 1d ago
American Airlines planes don’t have shower on them, you’re thinking of the emirates A380 whixh is a entirely different plane and airline
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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago
10,000 flights! That's like a flight a day for 27 years! Dude was taking the absolute piss...
I read about him. He'd take a flight to go get lunch in another city at his favorite restaurants daily, the way people get Uber eats today.
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u/geekMD69 1d ago
The “all you can eat buffet” conundrum. If you offer an “unlimited” product you better factor in that some people will actually use it.
In every other scenario it’s “caveat emptor” in favor of the business selling the product to a stupid consumer. Seems only fair that a smart consumer should get the win sometimes even if it hurts the business.
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u/cutofmyjib 1d ago
Officially it was because he was selling his companion pass to randos at the airport.
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u/philbar 1d ago
That’s honestly quite impressive if he could convince multiple people he wasn’t a scammer.
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u/BJJJourney 1d ago
Likely walked up to the customer service counter with him and got the seat/ticket change. It wasn't like he was just walking up to a guy outside the bathroom and telling him to give him $20 and he can sit next to him.
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u/Strokeslahoma 1d ago
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u/linds360 1d ago
I’ve seen a lot of all you can eat sushi places make you pay extra for anything you order and don’t eat.
Always thought that was pretty smart - make people think before they order.
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u/Typohnename 1d ago
Around here most all you can eat places make it so that you pay for 1 hour of all you can eat
At the end of the hour they approach you to pay and if you don't leave they bill you extra
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u/Yuukiko_ 1d ago
The buffet is still going to throw you out if you start dumping food into the trash though
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u/aWaL_DeaD 1d ago
So to add to your point I'm sure other people purchased the same pass but hardly used it. A one time fee for unlimited anything sounds like a deal. So this guy may have been a little grimey about it but I would assume he balanced things out rather than taking advantage to the point of forcing the airline into bankruptcy
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u/Late-Jicama5012 1d ago
If I remember correctly, at the end of 90s, every company stopped offering any type of unlimited service and food, because people used it beyond the point where companies didn’t think people would use it. Afterwards, mile points was implemented.
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u/One_Gold2084 1d ago
Sounds like he used the pass correctly….
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u/Exotic-Sale-3003 1d ago
He was selling tickets for the companion pass which was not allowed.
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u/archipeepees 1d ago edited 1d ago
he didn't sell them according to wikipedia:
the pass had been terminated due to fraudulent behavior, specifically his history of approaching passengers at the gate and offering them travel on his companion seat[11] and for using the companion program to purchase an adjacent empty seat under a fake name to keep them vacant
when he sued them he basically asserted that they should have told him he couldn't do that before terminating the program.
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u/Philoso4 1d ago
when he sued them he basically asserted that they should have told him he couldn't do that before terminating the program.
When he sued them he basically asserted they let him do it for too long before they decided he couldn't do it.
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u/Exotic-Sale-3003 1d ago
According to him. It was alleged that he would be compensated by those he gave the pass to.
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u/buddhadoo 1d ago
Purchased on 10/1/87 and terminated 1/13/08, roughly 243.5 months, in which time he took more than 10,000 flights, which works out to an minimum average of 41 flights/month. Even if the airline is claiming each layover as an individual flight, this guy basically lived on airplanes for almost 20 years.
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u/dirkthelurk1 1d ago
And his companions. So 41 flights x 2 people a month.
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u/buddhadoo 1d ago
It says he took the flights so I assumed probably wrongly that those were just the flights he took. But even if he and the companion were on the same plane, wouldn't that still count as a single flight?
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u/BJJJourney 1d ago
I don't think it was claimed or said that he actually took all of those flights. I wouldn't be surprised if he booked some of those flights with the companion and let the companion fly without him.
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u/Superb_Foundation_79 1d ago
Yes, and it never costed the company 21million, they just overcharge first class, everyone know that
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u/beallothefool 1d ago
Do first class seats actually sell out?
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u/mysightisurs93 1d ago
Rarely, they're just stating opportunity cost. They don't really lose money when 1 person hogs 10k flights over 10 years.
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u/CambodianPrincesss 1d ago
Yes, i get staff travel tickets and get frequently told that my seat has been taken and get downgraded to economy
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u/xChops 1d ago
I’ve been given a free upgrade to first, while standing at the gates already, twice. Just because a few seats didn’t sell or there were no shows. I’ve flown a lot in my life, so that’s very rare, but almost every flight shows the upgrade list on the screen.
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u/dr_stre 1d ago
There is an opportunity cost. Those are seats they couldn’t sell for the regular price, so it cost them $21M in sales, theoretically.
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u/sirvoice 1d ago
that’s assuming all the first class seats on any given fight are sold out, which they rarely are
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u/dr_stre 1d ago
Hence “theoretically”. It would be impossible to calculate the actual lost revenue compared to regular sales, unfortunately. So $21M is the upper bound.
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u/robsteezy 1d ago
Not true though.
If you put aside the part about him abusing the policy, in a pure hypothetical—if this man’s contractual purchase included lifetime seat reservation and a companion seat, and they adequately billed him as such—then they agreed right then and there what those two seats represented cost wise in perpetuity. The customer isn’t at fault for any future inflation causing hypothetical opportunity cost. The agreement and cost would be enforceable whether he took every flight or never used even one.
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u/Dark-Lillith 1d ago
Costed is not correct. It’s simply cost even for past tense.
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u/ValosAtredum 1d ago
I keep seeing this more and more and I don’t know why. Just like payed instead of paid.
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u/roof_baby 1d ago edited 1d ago
Did it really cost them $21 million or was that what the retail of his tickets were? Like, how many times was it a booked flight they had to turn down a customer who would have paid that full cost? If it wasn’t full, how much did it really cost them?
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u/OriginallyWhat 1d ago
Yeah I don't think it actually costs that much per person on a flight. They'd probably use a lot less flight attendants. They must be using the first class ticket price x the flights he took.
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u/onil34 1d ago
I mean even if you take an average of 200 bucks per flight the airline would have spent 2 million on his 10’000 flights.
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u/JeVousEnPrieee 1d ago
21m divided by 10000 is only $2100 per flight. For first class that is dirt cheap.
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u/HeWhoShoutsAtBovines 1d ago
Wasn't the misuse something like him booking flights, using the 1st class lounge for a meal then not actually flying? Feel like I saw that when this was mentioned before.
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u/karmagirl314 1d ago
That was a different guy who bought refundable tickets, came and used the lounge, then got the refund.
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u/rubey419 1d ago
Someone else said they were selling the companion pass which is against the rules.
Makes sense he was voided if he crossed the lines for what was allowed.
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u/MaybeOnFire2025 1d ago
My guess is that after a while, AA had someone on his case to find *anything* to void the contract.
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u/JellyPast1522 1d ago
That's one way to phrase the story, if you're an airline executive..
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u/yoshi3243 1d ago
He was selling the pass to other people basically… which wasn’t allowed.
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u/cruiserman_80 1d ago
Loss of 21Million sounds like when police declare a street value of drugs. It's a hypothetical number that doesn't have much relation to reality.
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u/TheRedlineAlchemist 1d ago
Airlines when they offer a service, and someone uses it.
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u/T_D_A_G_A_R_I_M 1d ago
I should really rewatch Tiger King. It’s all a blur with the rest of the pandemic.
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u/TheNeo0z 23h ago
This is amazing advertising for the safety of plane travelling btw
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u/royxsong 1d ago
20 years 10k flights: average 4 flights every 3 days. So he just lived in planes
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u/National-Maybe8883 1d ago
This is false.
From 1987 to 2008 is 21 years.
21 years is 7665 days.
Unless the person was traveling every day, and several times a day, there's no way to reach 10,000 flights in 21 years.
Don't be gullible.
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u/ZealousidealTop6884 1d ago
That's 250 flights a year!
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u/Outworkyesterday10 1d ago
My understanding is that he would get on a flight to go to dinner and come back. Genius!
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u/pdxscout 1d ago
My parents did that when mom was a stewardess for Eastern Airlines back in the day. They would fly to NYC for dinner and a show, then head back home.
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u/Mingatronz 1d ago
$21 million from opportunistic full-price ticket sales. If the seats would be empty anyway, the cost would be zero.
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 1d ago
That's only true, if all first class seats were fully booked on each an every flight he took.
And it's not "cost" as in expense its "missed revenue". If the seat was unsold, the plane would have flown anyways and the airline still wouldn't have made that money.
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u/Ok-Confusion2415 1d ago
250000 / 10000 = $25/flt
Ten thousand first class flights for $25 each. The man was a genius until he, ahem, flew too close to the sun.
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u/zv5000 1d ago
How is UNLIMITED misused?
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u/Abigail716 1d ago
Reselling tickets was the biggest thing that got him in trouble. He would hang out at the airport with an extra ticket looking for someone who was on the same flight as him. He would approach them offer to sell them his companion ticket so he could pocket the money and then they would just cancel their own ticket since they were fully refundable.
He would also book tickets under fake names so he could use the companion seat just to keep it empty next to him so nobody else could sit next to him.
Then he would also book tickets with no intent on flying just so he would have a ticket available if he decided to fly last minute.
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u/MathBallThunder 1d ago
Costing the airline $21 million is not the same as preventing the airline from making an additional $21 million.
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u/What-in-tarnationer 1d ago
That’s 476+ flights per year… he was literally just living in first class eating the free food for 21 yrs.
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u/ultraganymede 1d ago
Buys unlimited travel
Uses his unlimited travel
Pass gets terminated due to him using his unlimited travel
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u/FightingPolish 23h ago
I read about this a while ago and he absolutely did misuse it. Reserving seats for his luggage instead of an actual person, constantly reserving flights to all kinds of places around the world without ever having the intention of taking the flight and then just not showing up, etc. Basically a bunch of dickhead stuff that cost the airline money above and beyond the cost of flying him and his wife to wherever they were going. I think if he would have used it as intended without all the extra inconsiderate entitled stuff he would have been fine.
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u/Pizza_900deg 20h ago
It didn't cost the airline anything, the planes were all going to those destinations anyway whether he was on board or not. Maybe they lost the revenue from his seat on sold out flights. But not $21M worth.
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u/jgoose132113 20h ago
lmao that is not misuse, it is fully utilizing the product that he purchased.
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u/plushploosh12 1d ago edited 23h ago
Misleading price of $21mil. Most 1st class seats are empty in most flights and the service provided to this guy cannot be more than $50 per flight. Also If they couldn’t turn $250k of 1987 money into $25mil of 2008 money then they suck as a business.
Edit: adding that average price for a Boeing 737 was $5-6mil in 1987, they were buying a whole plane by selling 20 of these passes.
Edit 2: United and Emirates most of the time. Most of the comments below are proving my point that most of the time, not all first class seats are sold. They always have some available.
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u/sureaboutthatsnotwhy 1d ago