A man who bought a lifetime first-class plane ticket and used it to go all over the world ended up having it cancelled.
Back in the day, American Airlines was having some financial difficulties and came up with a plan to get some money, they’d sell first-class plane tickets which were valid for a lifetime.
If you bought one of these things you’d fork over $250,000 (£190,000,) and then you could get as much first-class travel as you liked.
It might sound like a bad deal for the airline in the long run, but they needed the money sooner rather than later, but of course they ended up losing out on potentially millions in earnings as the people who bought the tickets got a lot of use out of them.
One of the most famous buyers of these tickets was Chicago man Steve Rothstein, who got his in 1987 and then paid up another $150,000 (£110,000) for the companion pass that let him bring someone along with him.
Steve Rothstein made the most of his unlimited air travel, until in 2008 he was told his ticket had been revoked. (Caroline Rothstein)
The world was his oyster, at least until 2008 when he was boarding a flight with a friend and was handed a letter from American Airlines telling him his ticket was no longer valid.
The airline accused him of fraud, claiming he made a bunch of bookings with the companion pass under names like ‘Bag Rothstein’ and ‘Steve Rothstein Jr’ and letting strangers use the seats he’d booked.
According to their records, between May 2005 and December 2008, he’d booked two seats on a flight over 3,000 times and either cancelled or been a no-show for the vast majority of those.
However, in 2019, Steve’s daughter Caroline claimed in The Guardian that it was her dad’s way of coping with the death of his son Josh, who’d died in 2002 after being hit by a car.
She said her father told her: “When everyone was asleep in the house, and I had nobody to talk to, and I was lonely about Josh’s death, I would telephone American Airlines reservations and speak to the agents about who knows what for an hour and then at the end, they’d ask me, ‘oh, what reservation was I calling about to make’, and I would say, ‘Oh yeah, I need to go to San Francisco next week.'”
His daughter said the reason he booked seats he didn’t use was to cope with the tragic death of his son. (Caroline Rothstein)
He didn’t actually need to travel, but said he thought the airline had ‘logical people for me to speak to’ as they knew him and he knew them.
He also told his daughter he liked to book the seat next to him so it’d be empty and he wouldn’t have to explain to a stranger why he was crying.
Steve, who denied the allegations of fraud made against him, ended up saying ‘I wish I never bought the thing’ of his lifetime plane ticket.
Despite the lawsuits and legal action between Steve and American Airlines, they eventually settled the matter out of court.