An American Airlines employee who posed as a flight attendant to receive free flights on Spirit Airlines and other carriers now faces up to 20 years in jail.
American Airlines Employee Faces 20 Years In Jail…For Fraudulently Flying Spirit Airlines
To understand this case, we must first look at the world of non-revenue/space-available flying, which is one of the best fringe benefits of working in the airline industry.
Agreements vary by carrier, but airline employees can fly on many carriers beyond their own at a low cost, as long as there is a seat available. For example, an Air Canada employee can travel on Cathay Pacific or an American Airlines employee can travel on Spirit Airlines…as was the case here, though with a twist.
Most employees can book discounted tickets (the industry generally uses a Zonal Employee Discount [ZED] system that calculates pricing based on distance and class among three pricing levels; low, medium, and high). However, in the US, flight attendants and pilots often have access to space-available seats at no cost (not even taxes). Other employees pay a token amount for their flights.
Most airlines have booking systems that allow employees to book on other airlines, but the process is a little more old-school than you might imagine. The verification mechanisms that might have prevented fraud in the first place are often not present.
Furthermore, with more carriers moving to automated clearing of standby passengers, these standby travelers can now receive a boarding pass on their phones and board without having to show ID. That makes it easier to use someone else’s profile or, where possible, a fake one to board a flight without the additional check of verifying identity.
AA Employee Poses As Flight Attendant To Fly For Free
According to court documents, 35-year-old Tiron Alexander worked for American Airlines. This week, a federal jury found Alexander guilty of wire fraud and entering into a secure area of an airport by false pretenses. You can read his indictment here.
Alexander was an AA employee from 2015 until his arrest in 2024, but during that time flew 34 flights on Spirit Airlines and in total flew more than 120 times for free by falsely claiming to be a flight attendant.
To claim his free seat as a flight attendant, Alexander had to provide his employer, date of hire, and badge number. Throughout his fraud, Alexander posed as an employee of Alaska Airlines, Allegiant Air, Avelo Air, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, and Republic Airways.
CCTV footage from Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), Baltimore (BWI), and Fort Laurderldae (FLL) showed Alexander boarding flights after he had posed as a flight attendant.
Arlington, Texas detectives and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) worked closely to track and document Alexander’s travel patterns before arresting him. He faces up to 20 years for wire fraud and 10 years for entering into a secure area of an airport by false pretenses (the terms would be served concurrently).
CONCLUSION
Alexander proves that crime does not pay and faces up to 20 years in prison, though I suspect his actual sentence will be far less.
I won’t make jokes about Spirit Airlines here, beyond saying those free flights were expensive indeed! I can’t imagine risking my job (let alone my freedom) over free flights on an ultra-low-cost carrier. And yes, this reminds me of Catch Me If You Can!
image: Aero Icarus // Hat Tip: PYOK
At least he was a thrifty thief. But a thief no matter. And with the passenger’s data now being sold to track people identity information would have been compromised.
Ok, this is only tangentially related, please don’t flame me for this but since this post has to do with employee travel it made me think of this…
On Friday of Memorial Day weekend this year, I came off of a AA JFK-PHX flight, in a concourse mostly dominated by AA flights. Some kids were petting my dogs as we walked to baggage claim, and I looked up to see that the dad was none other than Scott Kirby, United CEO. He was with his whole family, including wife. Clearly the family came off of an AA flight.
I wonder why he didn’t fly United. I know he spent many years at AA, and, as CEO, probably gets major courtesies from many airlines, especially those where he worked. Maybe he prefers to be more incognito? Was just curious.
Maybe his lifetime postive space first class pass wih AA is more generous then with UA? Or he didn’t want to take the revenue away form UA? 😉
Story on Silver shutting down coming?
Probably not. I’m not very interested in Silver.
His defense will be, “I was primarily there for the passengers safety.”
LOL … a truly ‘dedicated’ aviation professional !
Sadly, it is more profitable to do elder abuse and persuade the person to enter a hospice that has a political agenda to kill. Not all hospices are like that. Then get an early inheritance, all legal. Or be a trustee and abuse the position but just short of prison. It makes airline ticket fraud look like peanuts or chicken feed.
I know of someone who killed 3 people for an inheritance and retired at age 50 as result.
I think 20 years for this is absurd. He never compromised aircraft safety, and only ‘stole’ theoretical revenue from airlines. No carrier suffered a loss because of his actions, nor did passengers suffer. He exposed a way to manipulate a system for free travel, albeit fraudulently, but to nobody’s detriment. He caught the TSA and carriers with their pants down, and he’s being punished because they’re embarrassed.
I feel like if you’re going to threaten somebody with two decades in prison, somebody, anybody, needs to have suffered some sort of a loss.
That’s e a key the point.
The TSA and airport police anre happy to let employee basically freely go through passengers’ luggage. But by God, if you cheat an airline out of revenue, and especially if you oosd off senior union members, they’ll throw the book at you.
Yep.
I guess there’s lots of empty space in the Federal Prison System with all the rioters and other convicted violent felons having been pardoned. A month per incident seems a little more rational to me though.
So I just watched yesterday a documentary about 2008 financial crisis and there was (as you very well know) only one hedge fund manager sentenced for fraud (just 249 millions) and he got 20 years of jail. Since he was featured in the documentary he got out much sooner than 20 years. Now, I’m not saying that this guy didn’t abused the system and didn’t in fact steal, but… 20 years… Better of stealing millions
Personally, I don’t consider this a criminal matter at all…this is a civil matter and while the guy should lose his job and owes these various airlines some money, I don’t think jail is the right remedy for this…but that’s just my two cents.
I think this case would be ripe for jury nullification. Unfortunately most jurors are ignorant of that concept and those prospective jurors who say they would not go against their conscience if there is a conflict between the law or jury instructions and their conscience always or nearly always get weeded out during voir dire.