An Airplane Ticket, not a Lifestyle Upgrade.

Here's a long-read, a cautionary tale of overreach in the form of a man who invested $400,000 in the mid-80s for a permanent American Airlines go-anywhere flight pass, for himself and a companion. He cost the company millions with his lawsuit, dismissed in summary judgment and upheld on appeal. His daughter here spins the tale as a victim tragedy for the family, but I would have liked to have seen the piece played alongside the travails of an American employee pensioner. Perhaps the daughter might have had less an attitude of entitlement: her father bought an airplane ticket and made the company his office, hiring for personal use their employees, and offering the companion seat as a freebie enticement to others, for which he personally benefitted at extensive cost to the company. No sympathy here.

Major US and global hubs became Dad’s office; American became his home. He knew every employee on his journey – from the curb, through security, to the gate, and on to the plane.
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Recently, Dad described himself as being “like an adopted child”. American – and its employees – were his parents. He knew the skycaps at O’Hare, LaGuardia, JFK, Heathrow, LAX; the people at the front desk at the Admirals Club pre-departure lounges; flight attendants on hauls he frequently flew; the gate attendants; and the folks who drove the carts from security to the gate, like Aamil.

Dad met Aamil when he was in high school, driving a cart at O’Hare, and took him under his wing – errands and various paid-for-hire tasks. Ultimately, Aamil started coming over for dinner; picked us up at school; became Josh’s “big brother” ears for his dating rendezvous as he entered high school; and was both an employee and a dear, dear friend.
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He regularly let relatives and people in crisis come along in his extra seat. There was the time he took my brother’s best friend on his first airplane ever to see a football game; the American Airlines employee he saw in India, crying because she might lose her job if she didn’t make it to Toronto; his brother and sister-in-law for their honeymoon; a guy from college and his wife who really wanted to go to Australia; a man in the back office at National Securities, who wanted to visit his dying father (he got there just in time).

“Your family’s heart is as big as the state of Texas... It’s incredible how many lives they touched and how many lives touched them because they’re very sensitive and attuned to what goes on in the world.”