And their attorneys say they don't have the highest hopes that these are going to get resolved any time soon. The Rothstein case seemed to be leaning in American's favor, but the Vroom case seemed to be leading in his favor and now both are stuck. Both lawsuits pending involving Vroom and Rothstein are now in legal limbo. However, Vroom's attorneys argue that the original contract Vroom signed doesn't have any prohibition on selling those tickets at all.ĬORNISH: Now, what effect has American's bankruptcy had on its legal efforts to try and get some of these air passes back?īENSINGER: The bankruptcy actually threw a monkey wrench into the plans of the lawyers because, typically, in bankruptcies, as was the case here, it freezes most of these lawsuits and that's what happened. Later in the court cases, they did, in fact, find some people who claimed they had paid Vroom in his case for tickets, which muddied the water a bit. Another case, actually took away a person's frequent flyer miles trying to force them to admit that they had paid for their tickets, none of whom did.Īnd that's something that came up in the legal cases because people felt these were unfair tactics and show that the investigation was hasty. In another case, barged into someone's office. And the airline cajoled them and, in one case, detained someone. And a bit of an embarrassing thing because the first several people that they thought they were going to catch and admit that they'd paid for these tickets, in fact, denied it. So, once they got these suspicions, the airline decided to kind of run a sting operation and catch people red-handed on this. With Vroom, she had a suspicion that she thought he might be making money off this, that he might be actually selling the companion seat or selling the miles. And, in the case of Rothstein, she looked at a high rate of cancelling reservations and a habit he had of booking flights or upgrading what appear to be strangers at the last minute into first class. Bridget Cade pulled tons and tons of flight records of the people she was looking into and, all told, she looked at at least five air pass holders and looked for kind of patterns or unusual things. She takes over what American calls its Special Revenue Integrity Unit.ĬORNISH: Describe how the investigators worked because how do you catch someone acting inappropriately with a perk that they've paid for?īENSINGER: Well, it's a great question. That same investigator also said that she thought Rothstein was costing them about a million dollars a year in lost business opportunity.ĬORNISH: Now, this person you're describing is Bridget Cade. He just loved to fly and was happier on a plane than anywhere else.ĬORNISH: How much money did American say that these pass holders were costing the company?īENSINGER: So American looked at their flight patterns and calculated every flight they had taken, what the seat would have cost if it had been sold to a regular customer and an investigator for American calculated that Jacques Vroom, in a five year period, flew $5.4 million worth of flights. Steve Rothstein from Chicago, an investment banker, flew a tremendous amount, originally for business and then pretty soon for his entire lifestyle. Some people, like Vroom and a few others, flew an enormous amount, flying four or five days a week. And how do you do that? I mean, essentially, is that common for people who had these passes?īENSINGER: I think it varied. So to start, tell us about one or two of the people you met in the course of your reporting who were doing all this flying on this unlimited pass.īENSINGER: Well, perhaps one of the kings of the air pass program was Jacques Vroom, interesting man from Dallas who, over his 20 or so years in air pass, accumulated 37 million frequent flyer miles flying on it.ĬORNISH: Oh, my gosh. Ken Bensinger wrote the story for the LA Times and he joins me now. In recent years, American began a concerted effort to get some of those passes back because the people who held them were still using them a lot. Only a few dozen people could afford the price tag, which started at a quarter of a million dollars. The airline first offered the unlimited air pass back in 1981. What do Baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays and computer magnet Michael Dell have in common? Both men, many years ago, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to American Airlines for what is essentially a golden ticket - fly anywhere on American anytime, first class, the flight attendants know your name and your favorite drink for life.
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