Kirby seems like a good CEO and a good man. I don't understand the vitriol against him here, except for the mindless "overpaid CEOs are bad" refrain.

As for the lifetime pass, I have mixed feelings. People who bought them (for a WHOLE LOT of money back in the day) seemed to enter into a contract for, well... a lifetime pass. But if said people abused it, playing fast and loose with the gray areas, then not only did they give the airlines the leverage they needed to cancel the pass, maybe it actually makes me sympathetic to the airlines.

And I was on only one flight only over the years with our illustrious multi-million-miler and I can say without any hesitation that the flight crew did NOT like him. He paraded around in a self-made jacket bragging about his miles, spent most of the flight in the galley self-promoting to anyone within earshot about it, and when I inquired with a couple of FAs I got a literal eye-roll and an earful about how they hated working his flights because he acted like he owned the airline. Based on that one experience (which was apparently toward the end of his long run), I have a different opinion than many others seem to.