In 1981, American Airlines (American Airlines) introduced an AAir pass unlimited ticket to solve the problem of cash flow shortage. This ticket is VIP of VIP, commonly known as SVIP, VIP among VIPs, and costs $250,000, equivalent to $5 million today. Since the price is so expensive, there must be something unique about it, what is it?
As long as you have an AAir pass unlimited ticket, you can fly on any American airline without booking, queuing, waiting, on the go, with a suitcase, or a lifetime unlimited first class. 8 word summary: 1 time to pay, lifetime enjoyment! If the customer pays an additional $150,000 on this basis, they can get another ticket, allow 1 accompanying person, and enjoy the same service as the main card.
American Airlines thought at the time: Normal people fly either for work or travel, and the number of voyages in a year is limited. Not to mention a year, even if you can't fly several times in your life. After all, no one will fly every day, so this lifetime unlimited ticket is not lost.
In fact, people who can afford it feel that this ticket is not cost-effective to buy, and they can't spend the money to buy a ticket for their whole life. People who can't afford it think it's a gimmick, so the ticket sales are extremely dismal. In 13 years, only 66 people bought, including computer giant Dell, baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mace and others.
Of course, people like Willie Mace bought these tickets not to get the money back, but simply for the status of a symbol. Because of the 66 people who bought tickets, 99% were top people who were either rich or expensive. There was only one exception, and he was Steve Rostan. If Willie Metz bought the AAir pass unlimited ticket for identity, steve bought it purely to suck the wool off of American Airlines.
Steve Rostein is a financier from Chicago, specializing in stockbrokers and traveling abroad. In 1987, he spent $250,000 on an AAir pass unlimited ticket and became a member of the Golden Ticket Club. In order to be able to better wool, the goods also spent $150,000 and bought a sub-ticket. In the same year, he began the wool road of American Airlines.
How did it come about? Steve first made a global travel plan for himself. Since his work has no time limit and comes and goes freely, he flies around and plays everywhere all year round. In the early stage, you can also make plans to plan where you should go on your next trip. But when he got to the back, he simply didn't even plan, when he wanted to leave, put on his luggage and ran directly to the airport, saw The American Airlines plane directly on, didn't look at the country, didn't look at the destination, where the plane went, where he went.
Sometimes he flies to Thailand just to enjoy an authentic Thai massage; Sometimes he flew to an unfamiliar city just to taste a sandwich with a unique taste; When he wants to reminisce with his buddies, he immediately flies to the city where his buddies are located and returns home on the same day after the incident; Sometimes he flew from Chicago to Los Angeles for a day and then to England or Canada for the night.
Of course, Steve is not only herself, but also brings family, friends, and even strangers with her. For example, sending her daughter to Sweden to study; Take your wife to see your daughter together, send her some daily necessities, etc.; Take his son to Italy to watch a ball game; Take the whole family to Japan for Christmas and so on. If he meets someone at the airport who misses his flight, Steve will pull out his ticket and take them with him on board.
The strangers he helped over the years included athletes, workers, priests, housewives, and so on. In the back, Steve's kung fu of wool has reached the point of pure fire ~ want to eat high-quality airplane meals, take the plane; There are new flight attendants coming, flying; Friends want to come to the house to play, take a plane to pick up.
Bottom line: If our home is home and our car is a car, then American Airlines is Steve's home, the plane is his car, and everyone else is his servant. We used cars as cars, Steve used airplanes as cars, and we had drivers and servants. It can be said that since buying an AAir pass unlimited ticket, he is either on the plane or on the way to the plane.
Steve took a plane, even more conveniently than we did by bus. "Major cities in the U.S. and around the world became Dad's offices, and he knew all the American employees on his journey, from the sidewalk to security checks to the gates and cabins," his daughter later recalled. In 2007, American Airlines discovered that Steve had too much wool and took him to court for violating the contract through a "speculative booking" to get back his 2 SVIP tickets.
In 2012, Steve eventually lost the case and the AAir pass unlimited ticket was recovered. So the question is, how much wool did he steal from American Airlines? According to American Airlines' own statistics, Steve has flown more than 10,000 times in 20 years (1987 to 2007), flying an average of more than 500 times a year, flying an average of 1.5 times a day, and a total mileage of more than 10 million miles (16 million kilometers), which can be said to be eating and living on the plane.
Among them, I went to Japan more than 120 times, to England more than 500 times, and to France more than 80 times. As for the number of domestic flights, it is even more. Based on the fare, it has reached $21 million. That is, Steven spent $400,000 on the airline's $21 million wool over 20 years. And his next 5 years of flight expenses (2007 to 2012) have not been added.
If you add the wool of the next 5 years, the number will only be more terrifying. Probably with a premonition that his 2 SVIP tickets were about to be invalidated, steven spent more fiercely in the next 5 years. American Airlines had no choice but to watch him shed her wool and couldn't do anything.
In fact, before the lawsuit, American Airlines could not find Steven's loophole and could not get back his ticket, so it offered to spend $400,000 to buy his 2 AAir pass unlimited tickets, but was rejected. After Steven lost the case, he angrily said: "American Airlines violated the spirit of the contract, stole my personality, stole my life." "Although American Airlines won the lawsuit and recovered the ticket, it also lost credibility.