In the eyes of many customers, the airline's attempts to restrict how much the most frequent AAirpass users could fly were unfair. While the AAirpass had great potential from a marketing perspective, in the long run it had some negative effects on American Airlines’ brand.

New restrictions were added and the program was rebranded as AirPass. All this without paying any additional cash for their tickets.Įventually, American Airlines started an investigation to see if there was any way they could cancel the membership of the most frequent AAirpass holders.īut because the early AAirpass contracts had virtually no restrictions, American Airlines had a hard time proving any wrongdoing.Īfter lengthy legal disputes, they did manage to successfully revoke the passes of the two most prolific AAirpass users on the grounds of ‘fraudulent’ behavior related to their companion passes.Īfter a couple of price increases, American Airlines eventually stopped selling the unlimited AAirpass in 1994. Steven Rothstein and Jacques Vroom, the two customers who used their AAirpasses the most, accumulated almost 50 million miles of flights in total. Unfortunately for the savvy customers who bought their own AAirpass, American Airlines quickly realized they were losing millions of dollars because of the sheer number of flights that were being taken. That may sound like a lot, but when you consider the fact that the AAirpass was limitless, and membership was life-long, it really was a steal. There was even the option to add a $150,000 companion pass. Upon its launch in 1981, customers could secure unlimited first-class travel for the tidy sum of $250,000, which is equivalent to around $715,000 in 2020. Businesses usually place many different restrictions on this kind of offer to protect themselves from exploitation. Nowadays, ‘unlimited’ very rarely means unlimited. The model they settled on was an unlimited flight pass that they branded as the AAirpass.

Instead of opting for more bank loans, the airline decided to offer a high-value unlimited ticket to its most frequent flyers. American Airlines' AAirpassīack in the early 1980s, what is now the biggest airline in the world was going through a bit of a rough patch.Īmerican Airlines was looking for quick ways to secure capital. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, there's plenty you can learn from this failed initiative. But the airline industry in particular is renowned for its prestigious, high-reward frequent flyer programs.Īll but the very smallest airlines now offer some sort of frequent flyer program that allows customers to earn air miles and other rewards each time they fly.īut there’s one historic airline promotional campaign which serves as a great example of how not to run a frequent flyer program. On the morning of October 12, 2000, as the Navy destroyer USS Cole sat anchored in the Yemeni port of Aden, a small boat packed wi… Parasympathetic Nervous System, parasympathetic nervous system Part of the autonomic nervous system.Loyalty programs are an important promotional technique in many industries. a set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole, in particular: ∎ a set of things working together as parts of… Sympathetic Nervous System, sympathetic nervous system That part of the autonomic nervous system which generally acts to stimulate the body to cope with stress, such as increasi… Uss Cole, █ STEPHANIE WATSON take aggressive action against (a place or enemy forces) with weapons or armed force, typically in a battle or war: in De… System, sys

Airpass trend