I’ve read these stories before. The one guy was booking a ticket for himself and then using his companion ticket to dummy book the seat next to him. By doing this, he was blocking the seat next to him for comfort purposes, meanwhile, AA was losing money on a seat they couldn’t sell that was going out empty. Consider if he was doing that on a few dozen international first class flights a year, then it turns into a noteworthy loss for the company. Since it didn’t cost him anything to do it, why not, right? I don’t feel bad for him.
The other guy seems a bit more innocent, although I sort of agree with AA’s viewpoint that they never intended people to take hundreds of flights a year just because they can. Regardless, that should have been spelled out in the legalese. AA ultimately won because they had the deepest pockets for a court battle.
AA’s revenue protection department is pretty well known in the industry for being pretty ruthless and doing stuff like this. They’re all over the frequent flyer program abuse too.
