He Legally Cheated American Airlines Out of $21 Million. So They Hunted Him Down

In 1981, American Airlines was desperate for cash. So it started selling something no airline had ever sold before: the AAirpass. One payment — and unlimited first-class travel, anywhere the airline flew, for the rest of your life.

Steven Rothstein, an investment banker from Chicago, bought one in 1987. Then he added a companion pass, so he could bring anyone he wanted. And then he did something American Airlines never expected.

He actually used it.

He flew almost every other day. Eighteen flights in a single month. A detour through San Francisco just to take a friend to the Louvre. Strangers handed free first-class seats just to make their day. Over more than twenty years, he flew over thirty million miles — and by the airline’s own math, he was costing it more than a million dollars a year.

So American Airlines turned the department built to catch cheaters on its most loyal customer. Investigators pulled his records. Security tracked down the people who had flown beside him. A broke music student was pulled into a back room at Heathrow and pressured to inform on another passholder. And one morning at Chicago O’Hare, Rothstein was handed a letter that ended his lifetime ticket — forever.

He hadn’t broken the rules. He had followed them — and won.

So can a company cancel a lifetime deal just because you used it too well? And who really cheated who?

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CHAPTERS

0:00 – Cold Open
1:26 – The Golden Ticket
4:32 – The Man Who Loved to Fly
7:51 – The Problem to Be Solved
11:18 – The Trap
14:46 – The Back Room
16:53 – The Same Letter
20:37 – The Verdict

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SOURCES & FURTHER READING

1. Los Angeles Times (05.05.2012) — investigation into the AAirpass “golden tickets”: https://www.latimes.com/travel/la-xpm-2012-may-05-la-fi-0506-golden-ticket-20120506-story.html
2. American Airlines termination letter to Steven Rothstein (DocumentCloud): https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/353158-rothstein-termination-letter.html
3. Rothstein v. American Airlines — original complaint (DocumentCloud): https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/353984-rothstein-first-complaint.html
4. Jacques Vroom’s AAirpass contract (DocumentCloud): https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/353874-vroom-aairpass-contract.html
5. ABC News (05.2012) — Extreme frequent fliers sue American Airlines over loss of unlimited lifetime ticket: https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/05/extreme-frequent-fliers-sue-american-airlines-over-loss-of-unlimited-lifetime-ticket/
6. TIME (08.05.2012) — The $250,000 airline pass that was worth every penny: https://business.time.com/2012/05/08/the-250000-airline-pass-that-was-worth-every-penny/
7. The Guardian (19.09.2019) — the story of the AAirpass: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/sep/19/american-airlines-aairpass-golden-ticket
8. CBS News DFW — Dallas man racks up 38 million airline miles: https://www.cbsnews.com/dfw/news/dallas-man-racks-up-38-million-airline-miles/
9. Wikipedia — AAirpass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAirpass