Originally Posted by
DJ_Iceman
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.
I only met Tom once, he was a seatmate and I did not even know who he was until an FA said to me (when I asked for a glass of water after using the lav), "do you know who you are sitting next to?"
The FA told me about Tom, I gathered from my conversation with Tom that he traveled a lot, I did not know how much, until the FA filled me in, I did not get the sense that she did not like him as much as she just did not understand anyone wanting to fly that much, which honestly I do not understand either.
Tom was a perfectly fine seatmate, I have had much much worse, that is all I can say about Tom, I do not know him personally, I have never spoken with him since and my only connection with Tom to this day, is this thread.
Kirby has never been my favorite martian, not because CEO, bad, but because I find him obnoxious and many times cheap.
A friend of mine worked with Kirby at the DOD and never had nice things to say about him, honestly, his persona today fits how my friend described him as a budget analyst at the DOD back in the 90s.
Now, none of that speaks to how Tom conducted himself, nor how he used his lifetime pass, I have no clue, I doubt any of us, short of those who know Tom personally know how he used his pass.