Airline offers Unlimited Free Travel ---- Passenger traves unlimited... STOP STOP STOP!! You're violating the terms of use of the Passes.

Just imagine being broke and having this pass. You could live and shower at any airport and then travel anywhere in the world just to eat first class dining food on the plane.

Now imagime this in current time: You buy this unlimited pass by getting a massive loan but you change your profession to a travel vlogger. You can churn out unlimited content, people will love it, your revenue sky rockets, you pay off the debt, and now you are 100x richer than you once were.

The guy who helped AIDS victims is actually a legend

AA offers unlimited travel Passengers actually travel: Shocked pikachu face

I feel like the people with these lifetime passes all own private jets by now

The modern day equivalent would be unlimited mobile data. You pay for it, but god forbid you actually use it... they either throttle back your speed or warn you about abusing the service

What is the point of paying 1 million dollars for the unlimited pass but you're only allowed to fly 1 millions worth of flight cost? OF COURSE they're gonna travel MORE than what it's worth. Otherwise it wouldnt make sense to purchase the pass in the first place.

this is gonna be on the airlines, 100%. They have the army of lawyers and skyscraper building full of employees, why didn't they gather a group together to brainstorm up a solid contract with foresight on possibilities of abuse of the airpass? No, they weren't really thinking at all, they just needed the money.

If i had this, i wouldn't stay in my apartment. I'd just fly the rest of my life

I don’t think there’s a single person on here that’s shocked an airline didn’t keep its promise.

My Dad's friend bought into this (along with the companion voucher). He flew to Heathrow to pick Dad up and took him back to Houston(?). Said it was a bizarre experience; having your friend fly for 24+ hours just to pick you up and then get treated like royalty on the flight. Apparently even back then (sometime around the late 90's or early 00's) they were trying to buy the tickets back from him for $300k or $400k (I forget exactly how much, but roughly what he bought it for 10/15 years prior). He refused! 😃

"He flew to Ontario just for a sandwich" That's my kinda life

American Airlines: NOOOOOO U CANT JUST FLY EVERY WEEKEND AND WASTE OUR MONEY Jackes Vroom: Haha the airplane go Vroom Vroom

Sounds like AA is pissed because they got beat at their own fraudulent game.

Respect to Vroom for helping AIDS victims see their families. they did nothing wrong here.

I would never had the money for the pass, especially when it was $3 million. But if I had, I would use it all the time too but would never make multiple reservations like that.

AA: Makes something Passenger:Makes the most of it AA: You can’t do that

I remember an old German movie about the same topic. It's from 1985 ("Grenzenloses Himmelblau"...best translated as "The endless blue sky"). The actress , Inge Meysel, was the last holdout to the expansion of an airport. Since they could not evict her, they made her an offer. For leaving her house to be demolished, she will receive a lifetime pass with no strings attached. Thinking that old lady would A) not use it very often and B) would probably die anyway. They were wrong on both counts. She started to really enjoy her life, flying everywhere, using the aircraft as her home. In the end they made a deal with her to stop her from flying every effing day and bought her a new home or something like that. It was really funny and shows that something like this should be thought through before offered. In the cases shown here, I think the airline made the mistake to not look at the full picture. Of course they flew more often. I would do that, too. Everybody would. The only thing that stops me from flying first class just for fun is the price tag. Remove that and I WILL use it. They should factor in all passes they issued. I bet there are a few that never used them to the fullest. Some might even have died. Those are the ones that MADE money for the airline. Others will cost money. This is a simple mixed calculation. All businesses use this. One item is cheap to lure customers in to buy the more expensive items. If you get a flat rate for your mobile data or wifi, most people will not use it, other will overly use it. When you were smart, you make a lot of money with that. If you are dumb, you have to pay the price. To cancel their passes without proving their fault first is a dlck move. Unfortunately they were not rich enough to sue the airline for all their money.

They should have put a maximum miles per year, something very, very high, but not “16 trips to London in 25 days” high.

3:17 That also basically means he would've seen flight safety videos 10k times

If Sam Chui owned one of these.. oh God..

AA: “I am altering the deal, pray that I do not alter it any further!"

"Adjusted for inflation" Yep... Lets be fair however, even if AA terminated these contracts by abusing their power, getting 40 million dollars worth of flights for 250K is still a win.

Summary: American Airlines made a stupid mistake and threw a hissy fit

Thank you for this excellent report. Over a long period of time, I have read many iterations of the passes and the stories. NONE, even in major, usually reliable media, have presented the facts as fully as you have. I read a lot and it is unfortunate how frequently only 50% or 65% of the facts are told.

How did that loan work tho. "I need a loan of 400k for booking an airline ticket"

That was still a huge bet since you could never if the company would go bankrupt.

If it was me i would have not gone for it. Seeing how often airlines close down. I would have not taken that risk. So these people who bought them definitely deserve the rewards.

Passholder: _"Unlimited."_ AA: _"You keep using that word. We do not think it means what you think it means."_

The genius who thought of this brilliant idea is probably CEO now.

To be fair, as the video mentions, they did waste a lot of the airline's resources by making 20k+ speculative bookings and cancelling them last minute. That's like leaving leftovers at an all you can eat. Wasn't good on AA to break their promise, but these people weren't in good faith either.

If I ever get a time machine, I'm going to 1981 first thing.

They should've given out the passes via a subsidiary companie, wich they could run into bancrupcy any time :D

I’d literally live in the first class lounges and cabins for the rest of my life and do nothing else.

Passengers: So we can fly on any flight with these passes American Airlines: Well yes, but actually no

I love this story. What a dream to have free high tier travel with service.

The stories that you uploaded and did research are so informative and fun to watch. Thank you for uploading and wish your channel get more sponsorship in the future.

Can't believe I only just stumbled across your channel. Thank you for creating such great content!

Beautifully written. Very tight. Perfect pacing. I will look for more videos because of how well this was done.

This story holds an important lesson - don't remove the cost from a certain action. Had it only been the excessive flying it would have been easier to forgive, bit the blatant disrespect shown when booking a huge number of very expensive flights and then canceling them the last minute is just too much.

It would be nice if they sold unlimited economy pass

Not truly on the same level, but when I just graduated uni, I bought an Air Canada North America Pass that let me fly Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays anywhere in North America. It was the best investment ever! It cost me approx 400 bucks per month? I don't remember but it was awesome. Went to NYC for the weekend, Seattle for seafood, Miami for Sun, Vancouver whistler for snowboarding, Detroit for the autoshow haha

they tried to con their customers lol they're just upset it didn't go their way

fascinating story and well-researched video, like it, always is on this channel. Thumbs up.

The best part of this pandemic was the airlines’ suffering. Of course you have to feel bad for the workers who are just doing their jobs but it was nice to see these abusive airlines like American and United take huge loses. They extort the working man for every possible penny during the good times but now need the people again to keep afloat

This was 1 of the most interesting & entertaining vids I've ever watched, 2 thumbs up!!! 👍👍

The fact that they still honor the other 50+ passes even though they're pure losses to the airline is pretty cool.

I love this story! The people who took the offer absolutely amazing

I have seen this video somewhere else too

Imagine selling those companion tickets to strangers for regular ticket prices. Doing this for 18 years as a main job - no taxes on this money - thats a nice income.

Back in 1981 when these passes were sold AA flew only within North America and nobody could have predicted that several years later they, along with UA, would replace PA and TW as the major US longhaul international carriers. I do wonder why at the time of the major route expansion, when AA changed from being a US Domestic/North American regional carrier to a worldwide international carrier, AA didn't attempt to restrict the validity of the passes to the North American network which existed at the time when they were sold instead of allowing unlimited worldwide F class travel which would never have been their intention or a reasonable expectation of the purchaser at the time of purchase. Aside from the fact that standard US domestic F class and longhaul international F class are not the same product, if you buy an unlimited pass from a domestic carrier you don't expect to be able to fly around the world with it! I have an airline background and am confused about the claim that AA had to pay these large amounts of taxes every time one of the pax was a noshow. This makes no sense and needs clarification. The amount of taxes would vary according to the actual journey being made; it cannot possibly be a fixed amount identical for every journey. It is also difficult to comprehend how taxes could be payable if the pax did not travel. There is something very much not right here. In addition, back when these passes were purchased, taxes were few and far between; it is in more recent times that 'taxes and other charges' have become commonplace. Why did AA accept to pay these Government imposed taxes on behalf of the pax rather than making them pay the taxes themselves? Concerning the behaviour of the pax in making the double/multiple bookings, this is again something that AA reservations staff should have been able to minimise. Full fare pax travelling on fully refundable tickets have always had a habit of this sort of behaviour (which is one of the main reasons why airlines overbook flights) and airline reservation departments are experienced in dealing with it. Airline reservation systems can detect such bookings. Airline staff can contact pax, have a polite word with them and establish which of the bookings they actually intend to use. If things got out of hand a polite letter from an appropriately senior person at AA asking them to refrain would have probably done the trick. This was pre-internet so there must have been an established procedure to follow for the pax to make their reservations and collect the physical ticket. The claims about AA having to upgrade pax from lower classes to fill the unoccupied seats and therefore loosing money is also highly questionable. Such upgrades would only have occurred if the lower class was overbooked and therefore, instead of losing money, AA was actually saving money by not having to deny boarding to the overbooked pax who could be upgraded instead. I get the impression that AA allowed these individuals to get away with murder for years, made no attempt to impose any reasonable constraints on them, such as refusing to issue multiple tickets for impossible multiple journeys or remonstrating with them for double bookings, frequent no-show etc, agreed to pay a fortune in taxes on their behalf (apparently) and then one day all of a sudden they came down on these individuals like a ton of bricks.

They were counting on the sickness and boredom that flight causes to all normal people... but we are not all normal people

COME PLAY WITH ME !¡! I got into This Same Game with American Airlines, bought the companion ticket too! Mine are for the VIP Admirals' Club, I have unlimited access to the first class lounges at over a thousand airports. They keep trying to restrict them, but I haven't lost access yet. LAX has three clubs covering more than a hundred thousand feet.

American Airlines: gotta dump these passholes before they start living on the jet full time. Reminds me of internet service where 1% of users consume 98% of the datacenter bandwidth torrenting absolutely everything available for download on pirate bay, transferring hundreds of terabytes per month ;) But hey, if I can't use it to the maximum potential then don't advertise it as unlimited.

10:55 Thats the smoothest transition to an advert i've ever since... haha

Wow. I didn’t even know this existed.

The Joyce guy mentioned is always on my flights to London. Such a great guy.

US: The country where if you are wealthy enough you can win all court cases.

The one MOST IMPORTANT NOTE to this entire video... that makes AA out to be the bad guy... is SECTION 12 OF THE AGREEMENT! It's almost as if that section was intentionally NOT shown so as so keep this whole video vague. If there were TRULY "NO CONDITIONS" then there would not have been THAT MANY sections in the AGREEMENT. I would not be surprised if section 12 doesn't SPECIFICALLY SAY that they aren't allowed to pick up RANDOM PEOPLE or BOOK HUNDRED OF OVERLAPPING ADVANCE FLIGHTS ONLY TO CANCEL THEM MINUTES AHEAD OF TIME. Just the fact that there are MANY others still holding onto THEIR PASS shows that those two PROBABLY were actually abusing their agreement... but we may NEVER KNOW NOW.

Reminder: Never fly American Airlines. Ever. For any reason.

1:20 no, no, no. Business class was not like this at all in the 1990s, and yes the "First Class" pass meant business class on international routes

Loved that in 1:59 shows a clip from my city, and the ones before that, from my country ❤️❤️

thank you im really enjoying all the stories

Imagine This Would've Happened in 21st Century after KZfaq came, *take a loan, travel the world, different cities everyday, different countries every week and Post it on instagram and make Travel Vlogs on KZfaq, Earn Even more money, Pay Back loans, become Famous and Rich* 😱

wtf that pass seemed like the ultimate goal in life wow

I liked the opening scene from Diamonds are Forever!

That's very close to the plot of a German TV-movie from the mid-'80s (Grenzenloses Himmelblau): A pensioner refuses to sell her home and is thus blocking the expansion of an airport. An airline that has a huge interest in the expansion happening is trying to bully her into selling, finally sweetening the deal by offering her a lifelong, unlimited pass. As the "smart" manager said: "She is an old woman who has never travelled much, she will only use the pass once or twice and that's it." The pensioner ends up enjoying flying and racks up thousands of airmiles. Then the airline panics and tries to back out of the deal. I wonder if headlines about the AA tickets inspired this story. This would mean that the writer foresaw the problems and the airline's U-turn before AA themselves ever realised there was a problem.

AA paid the Court Justice a whole lotta money to back them up in those lawsuits. How crooked. But those two guys really abused their free pass. The whole thing is really funny though! The thought of flying anywhere at anytime first class with all the perks, WOW !!!! Insane !! 🤓

AA would have to pay me to fly with them. Hell no.

7:30 it COULD retail for that much, but it wouldn’t. Because flights ALWAYS have left open seats in first class. The whole reason AA offered the deal for first class is because it is the least booked part on a plane

I wonder what AA will do now with flights being way down, great video and great segue into NordVPM...props to ya!

Smart guys, if had the money then, and i was around the time it was offered, i would taken it as Well. The 1st part of the video i was already sold and i know i would get more out of it..

AA really expects multi-millionaires (who are really good at managing their money) to spend 250k on this pass and then only use it once in a while

Fundamentally, there are two issues at hand with this scheme: 1. Sunk cost fallacy. Some people feel like they have to use the pass because they have it. Travel for London for brunch, for example, I won't do that even if the flight is free. It's going to cost me quite a good deal of time, if not money. And even traveling first class is not as comfortable as the comfort of your own home. I mean occasionally and rarely for an exotic experience and eat something upscale, sure. But as a frequent thing, no thanks. 2. Some people are selfish and brutally so. In that they don't care how much it cost the other party as long as they can get any value out of something. Booking a backup flight, for example, might only have an actual value of like a few bucks, if even that, to the traveler. But will cost the airline thousands. In a way, it's the same thing as stealing the catalytic converters off a car--the thief only gets a few bucks for the scrap value but the car owner now have to spends thousands to fix the car. Except it's legal in this case, but the fact remains that "value" is disproportionally destroyed as a result. This is essentially the sort of technically legal but morally wrong things that our parents should have taught us not to do. Not unlike, for example, MLMs. The legal status is hazy but we know they are scams. To be clear, I'm of the opinion that more than one party can be at fault. I do blame the passenger for abusing as opposed to just using the pass. But at the same time, the airline certainly displayed a lack of foresight to not realize this is going to happen.

Great story. Please make more info about such cool fun stories.

5:31 distracted by air crew from our land. lol

Great video, for your next one look up what "unlimited replacement warranty" on consumer goods apparently means!

Why does the government allow a business to break contracts when they make bad decisions. When a person breaks a contract, there a penalties to pay.

make up the lost money by transporting small but important things that need to get to another place quickly witth your unlimited pass and charge less than the postal service

If this program was reintroduced in 2020 or 2010s, KZfaqrs will be the high flyers.

shit you not, my mum works at a pretty famous tourist attraction, a family booked it out after hours for a private tour, my mum was chatting to the daughter asking what else they had done today since it was a holiday for them, she so casually told my mum that they went to Sweden for lunch to their dads fav restaurant then just flew back to Edinburgh back to the hotel and came to the tour. like it was nothing for them, like me ordering a take out is the equivalent of that situation for them.

In Brazil I'd be able to sue the airline with a fresh out of university lawyer, win the case and probably get some money from the airline for my trouble and pay the lawyer from that money. US we always hear the "you can't sue a multibillion dollar company because it'll drag forever and you'll go bankrupt from lawyer fees". There's no justice in the land of the free.

At first I thought the pass was to get first class for the price of economy.

I can see AA trying to put the pass holders on a special flight on a Boeing 737 Max...

I had a friend who had this pass and he used it a lot. I went on many trips with him as he had the companion pass also. The thing not mentioned in the video is that these people also got advantage points at a rate of 1 1/2 points per mile as it was first class. My friend didn't live to be really old but in about 15 years he managed to acquire 25 million advantage points, I saw the embossed card with the numbers on it that they gave him. He had a game of trying to get the most miles he could from a flight when they had special offers for so many extra points for doing more segments on a flight or more flights per month, some months he got 35 to 40 k miles. So altho he didn't live all that long and could not leave the pass to his wife at least he left her 25 million advantage points. I also knew Jack Vroom and he got his pass back after a court fight.

This is basically your own plane at whatever day you want to fly & free food & pilot/crew

Also you earned AA miles on all these flights, which you could transfer to hotel partners and rent a car companies.

Getting offered something that's too good to be true, can sometimes be a good thing!

If you fly a lot, this would be actually a good deal (By a lot I mean at least once a week). Especially having in mind that you'd always fly first for the rest of your life. The only downside is that it would be only one airline, and might not be as connected as some other one. It's certainly a better deal than flying private.

Lawyers should have written the contracts a little more clearly. One booking at any given moment. And only so many a month or day. They should have their passes back.

Imagine having the choice of flying to Italy, Japan, France, etc just for a sandwich

I would fly out to California just to get In-and-out and be literally be in and out. lol

Your description from 1:34 to 1:54 is my goal. Wish me luck guys.

The animations are so smooth. Besides, interesting video

You could literally not own a home and fly overnight to different destinations everyday lol

I would spend my whole life traveling in planes.

This video is actually quite fascinating, (having worked in the airline industry myself for some years), what would be really fascinating would be to make a video explaining how airlines sell tickets and waitlist passengers, this would go quite some way into explaining how these two American Airline passengers (and others in the scheme), were able to book so many flights and yet not travel, as this is a perk/function of the highest end tickets for people who DO pay. It’s also very interesting in regards to what each class of ticket allows people to do. One small fact of interest is ,on scheduled service especially, even though you may have a valid ‘confirmed’ ticket, a seat is rarely if ever fully guaranteed at the point of check-in (according to conditions of carriage et cetera). It would probably make for a very interesting video if it were researched thoroughly. There are many tricks and perks the everyday passenger can do to make the most out of airline travel, and travel theoretically for free if they get these tips and tricks under their belt.

This is why you never fly American Airlines. They might scam you!