Man with $250,000 lifetime first-class ticket had it canceled after he cost American Airlines $21,000,000

Steven Rothstein spent $250,000 to buy an American Airlines lifetime first-class ticket and ended up costing the company $21 million.

Rothstein bough the ticket in 1987, and then used it to board more than 10,000 flights.

American Airlines eventually revoked his pass.

And then things got worse.

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The reason why American Airlines revoked his pass

American Airlines launched the AAirpass – a lifetime first-class ticket – in the early 1980s.

The company was just trying to bring people on board, but they never anticipated that one such ticket holder could cost them $21 million.

By 2008, Rothstein – one of only 66 who bought the pass – had racked up 30 million miles with his lifetime pass, all of which were free of charge.

It took the company a while to realize this but they eventually did the math and concluded this one passenger alone was costing them millions.

So they did two things.

First, they revoked his lifetime pass, which was bad enough, and then they went further and decided to sue him.

In short, the airline accused him of booking seats for non-existent passengers and for flights he was never planning to board.

Rothstein and American Airlines eventually settled the case outside of court.

The end of the lifetime pass?

American Airlines never said as much, but Steven Rothstein’s case was probably a key component of the airline’s decision to kill off its lifetime pass program.

Rothstein’s case probably made the airline realize it takes just one passenger to take ‘all you can fly‘ part literally for the whole thing to become unprofitable.

United Airlines had a similar experience with Tom Stuker.

As far as we’re aware, they never canceled his pass, but United – like American – is no longer offering lifetime passes.

A few airlines still offer equivalent programs, including US airline Frontier, which just launched its ‘all you can fly’ pass.

But there’s now a fruit salad of caveats and restrictions designed to make sure the program favors the airline, not the passenger.