Dave Noble

It is not true in all aspects

Where no rule has been broken, then there is no grounds to penalise someone for breaking a rule.

If someone here was fired despite not breaking a rule that would permit dismissal, then the company could expect to be taken to court

C17PSGR

Always an interesting story.

What a shame they used it to sell tickets or make duplicate reservations.

Wonder if there is still anyone using it? Must be some. Maybe that explains the super high mileage flyers on the Nashville AC board.

pauleeepaul

In Beijing I was in an AYCE place and they had a sign up that such activity would incur a surcharge, in English and Chinese. Didn't seen any imposed though (and certainly didn't warrant one myself )

QueenOfCoach

When the LA Times article was first published, the online edition of the newspaper had links to PDFs of the contracts. I assume these PDFs were provided to the newspaper by the two airpass holders involved. The signature of one of the passholders was reproduced in the PDF.

As I mentioned above, there is language in the contract that permits the airline to cancel the airpass, complete with a schedule of refund according to how many years they were in the contract. X years gets Y% refund. As I mentioned above, to my best recollection that refund reduces to zero after 20 years. Thus, as I read it, the airline was in its contractual rights to cancel the airpass and refund as provided in the contract. In the case of these two passholders, 20+ years in the contract that refund was zero.

There are other examples of people pushing the system and getting burned.

Northwest v Ginsberg comes to mind. Ginsberg filed complaints every time his luggage was delivered late (minutes, not days), among other things. Northwest (later Delta) finally cancelled his frequent flyer account. Ginsberg sued and the case was decided in favor of the airline in the US Supreme Court. Instead of self-limiting his complaints to some reasonable level, Ginsberg got greedy and eventually lost it all. Did he break any rules? No. He abused the system, in my opinion.

Then there is the Hayes situation. Hayes wanted to guess-estimate if his upgrade would clear. He wanted to look at seat maps to see how many unoccupied seats were left, and did so by creating fictitious bookings, then cancelling before the "hold" or "pay" button. He did this 28 times over a four day period. Apparently he did not know the airline also offered a "View Available Seats" option that did not involve fictitious bookings.

The fictitious bookings, even if never put on hold, still removed seats from inventory thus reducing the number of seats that the airline could sell. The airline deducted miles from his account as a disciplinary action, and Hayes filed a complaint with the DOT.

Was Hayes breaking the rules? There is no rule that says you can't make a booking, then cancel before the "hold" or "pay" process. Everyone does that when exploring different possibilities for an upcoming trip. 28 times over a 4 day period was viewed as excessive, and he was dinged.

Both the Ginsberg and Hayes cases illustrate what I said earlier. Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.


If there is some kind of contract or collective bargaining agreement in place, then, yes, a fired employee has recourse if they are fired for reasons detailed in the contract. The employee I have in mind is not in any contract or collective bargaining agreement. She is an employee "At Will", and can be fired for any reason, so long as they reason does not involve protected groups such as race, religion, gender, etc. In this particular case of my co-worker getting fired, the reason has nothing to do with protected characteristics and all to do with her pushing the envelope of the employer's expectations. Obviously I can't go into details, but suffice to say I agree with the termination. I feel sorry for the co-worker, I like her personally and wish her well, but it got tough for the rest of us to look the other way over and over and over.

Finally, think of all those folks who got fired due to "Me Too" complaints about sexual misbehavior. I doubt if any of their employment contracts said "Employee may not masturbate in the presence of another employee; doing so is grounds for termination", but that is the sort of activity that got them fired.

Fraser

Saw this posted elsewhere and thought a few here might enjoy it. Written by Steven Rothstein's daughter about her father's lifetime AAirpass, how it came about and how it was taken away. Very long but pretty interesting!

https://narratively.com/the-man-with...=pocket-newtab

caburrito

AA seemed pretty generous up until the bookings of purposely empty seats.

corporate-wage-slave

This same article has now been republished today in The Guardian, one of the UK's most prominent newspapers.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...-golden-ticket

gkbiiii

Do you think AA will bring about another round of Air-passes?

JDiver

Personally, I doubt it.

mctrees02

If Dougie P needs to drum up some cash to potentially keep his job, then everything is on the table.

Psyclone*Jack

Hello

I am looking for some advice. My father recently passed away, he held an unlimited Airpass purchased in the 90s. I have access to his account and it seems there are mileage 'balances' remaining. While I am sure there is no beneficiary of these balances, I do want to understand what might happen with any remaining balances he had for travel. Would these be refunded or are they foregone?

I am not exactly sure how the Airpass worked, so forgive if any of this is obvious. Looking for some advice prior to notifying AA of his passing.

Thank you

IAD_flyer

My sympathies for your father's passing. The unlimited AirPass cannot be transferred, but the redeemable mileage balance might be able to be transferred. AA is under no legal obligation to allow it, but normally allows the transfer. This thread has more info: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...aster-thd.html

Psyclone*Jack

Thanks. I read above that the Airpass did offer a one-time transfer of ownership, does that apply here?

seawolf

Lifetime airpass mentioned on page 269.

https://www.aa.com/content/images/ta...nal-tariff.pdf

platbrownguy

Interesting -- am I correct that the 6 month Airpass is also no longer available?

($4k for 12,500 flown miles is a good deal on some routes, particularly with DCA-PWM already at $436+/ow for many summer dates... I might end up even buying a regular Airpass because of the fares on this short route.)