What’s the greatest single thing you could ever own? Normally I would say it’s either a shark tank in your basement or a professional sports team, but that would be wrong. The best thing you could ever own is clearly the AAirpass, the legendary golden ticket issued by American Airlines that gives its holder lifetime free airfare anywhere in the world.
As the L.A. Times reported over the weekend, American Airlines created its amazing open-ended lifetime ticket back in 1981 as a way to raise capital amid high Reagan-era interest rates, but now AAirpass is losing millions of dollars a year and the airline is trying to boot some of the program’s most frequent fliers.
In 1981, when American first made the offer, you could buy the lifetime unlimted AAirpass for just $250,000 and a companion pass for $150,000. Even with free airfare, the passholders still earn frequent flier miles and get access to all the other upscale perks such as the Admirals Club.
“We thought originally it would be something that firms would buy for top employees,” said Bob Crandall, American’s chairman and chief executive from 1985 to 1998. “It soon became apparent that the public was smarter than we were.”
Imagine if you could fly anywhere in the world anytime you wanted, for free.
Mike Joyce of Chicago bought his in 1994 after winning a $4.25-million settlement after a car accident.
In one 25-day span this year, Joyce flew round trip to London 16 times, flights that would retail for more than $125,000. He didn’t pay a dime.
“I love Rome, I love Sydney, I love Athens,” Joyce said by phone from the Admirals Club at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. “I love Vegas and Frisco.”
Then there’s the story of Steven Rothstein, a man who has racked up more than 30 million miles with his AAirpass.
He bought his AAirpass in 1987 for his work in investment banking. After he added a companion pass two years later, it “kind of took hold of me,” said Rothstein, a heavyset man with a kind smile.
He was airborne almost every other day. If a friend mentioned a new exhibit at the Louvre, Rothstein thought nothing of jetting from his Chicago home to San Francisco to pick her up and then fly to Paris together.
In July 2004, for example, Rothstein flew 18 times, visiting Nova Scotia, New York, Miami, London, Los Angeles, Maine, Denver and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., some of them several times over. The complexity of such itineraries would stump most travelers; happily for AAirpass holders, American provided elite agents able to solve the toughest booking puzzles.
They could help AAirpass customers make multiple reservations in case they missed a flight, or nab the last seat on the only plane leaving during a snowstorm. Some say agents even procured extra elbow room by booking an empty seat using a phony name on companion passes.
That shit cray.
While the Times story focuses on the company’s cat-and-mouse battle with the remaining members, I’m fascinated by the sheer magnitude of life-changing effects the AAirpass has on people. Imagine having the freedom to go anywhere on a whim. If I had one of those golden tickets, I’d feel guilty spending a weekend at home.
American seems to have realized that the 1981 prices were too good to be true. In 1990, the airline raised the price of an unlimited AAirpass with companion to $600,000. In 1993, it was bumped to $1.01 million. In 1994, American stopped selling unlimited passes altogether then briefly offered the unlimited AAirpass one last time, in the 2004 Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalog for a cool $3 million. No one bought it.
