PG: I’ll be devil’s advocate here, if I bought the pass that offered me unlimited travel for free on American, then American shouldn’t have a problem with me flying 365 days a year if I wanted to right?
KB: You would think that.What American did was say, “Well, these guys have had their fun but is there anything they’re doing that we can pin on them to get rid of it?”
They started investing the air pass holders who flew the most. The two people they targeted Jacques Vroom and Steven Rothstein. Vroom had 37 million miles in his frequent flyer account and Rothstein had 31 million miles.
American’s investigators asked, “Is there anything they’re doing that we can claim they shouldn’t be doing?” Ultimately they came up with some reasons that seem to be pretty debatable from a legal point of view.
They surprised Jacques Vrooms with a sting operation in London. He flew from Dallas to Heathrow got off the plane and they came up to him and said, “ Here’s a letter that says you can never fly on American Airlines again, your air pass is terminated, your admirals club membership is terminated, your frequent flier miles are revoked, your elite status is revoked, and you are persona non grata.”
They did the same thing to Steven Rothstein at the gate in O’Hare came up and said essentially the same thing and sent him home. So that’s what they did of course for these gentlemen it was a shock and really a dramatic change in their lives about both had a lot of difficulties after that.
PG: What exactly did they uncovered?
KB: In their investigation of some of the top flying air pass holders, they found some really unusual and unique flying patterns. In the case of Steven Rothstein, they discovered he was booking an enormous number of flights and canceling a majority of those.
He had about 3,000 bookings in a 4-year period and 2500 cancellations.
They also found that he was meeting strangers at the gate and offering them upgrades to first class on his companion seat. They decided under their rules it was suspicious if not fraudulent behavior, so they took away his pass based on that pattern.
