WUI (Writing under the influence)

American Airlines is in bankruptcy and will probably be able to get rid of these lifetime passes.

There are frequent fliers, and then there are people like Steven Rothstein and Jacques Vroom. Both men bought tickets that gave them unlimited first-class travel for life on American Airlines. It was almost like owning a fleet of private jets. Passes in hand, Rothstein and Vroom flew for business. They flew for pleasure. They flew just because they liked being on planes. They bypassed long lines, booked backup itineraries in case the weather turned, and never worried about cancellation fees. Flight crews memorized their names and favorite meals. [...] Some say agents even procured extra elbow room by booking an empty seat using a phony name on companion passes. "I'd book it as Extra Lowe," said Peter Lowe, a motivational speaker from West Palm Beach, Fla. "They told me how to do it." [...] Creative uses seemed limitless. When bond broker Willard May of Round Rock, Texas, was forced into retirement after a run-in with federal securities regulators in the early 1990s, he turned to his trusty AAirpass to generate income. Using his companion ticket, he began shuttling a Dallas couple back and forth to Europe for $2,000 a month. [...] Rothstein [...] would sometimes pick out strangers at the airport and give them surprise first-class upgrades with his companion pass. Once he flew a woman he'd just met in New Delhi to Chicago, a lift American later valued at nearly $7,500. [...] 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.

To each according to his needs? What a joke! People will always take more than they need if it's "free." And the result will be higher and higher cost for the rest of us even if we use our share of resource as intended. I'm not defending American; in fact, I wanted Bush to let it and United fail after 9/11. I simply point out that humans are humans and everything that seems "free" will be abused whether offered by a private company or by a government agency. Will our government go the bankruptcy route or will it "ask" somebody else again to pay for its mistakes? I wouldn't call them "mistakes"; it was all foreseeable. It always happens.