Conspiracy To Sell Tickets Meant For Customers Who Assisted Southwest's Flight Crew
The AP is reporting that 10 people have been indicted in a conspiracy to sell 5,600 fraudulently obtained Southwest Airlines tickets. The tickets were supposed to be for passengers who helped flight crews with seriously injured or ill passengers.
Instead, prosecutors say they were stolen by a former administrative assistant and passed along to a network of people who sold the tickets at low prices and told them buyers not to tell Southwest employees that they bought the tickets.
Ten indicted in fraudulent airline ticket scheme [USAToday]
(Photo:Paxton Holley)
Post a comment
Comments:
Not necessarily -- I assume they had a drawer full of them in the office where the "former administrative assistant" worked ready to be issued when needed. He or she probably grabbed a stack of them and sold them.
Let's assume that 4 people helped in each incident. That's still 1,400 incidents, which average to 4 seriously injured or ill passengers a day. They need Sully over there!
@NotStimulated_GitEmSteveDave: The article makes it sound like the tickets were kept around to dole out as needed, much like the "We're sorry" gift cards some companies do.
I did not know that there was even such a thing as those tickets. I guess I'd never thought about it. I... well, I learned something today!
@Coles_Law: Don't you think somebody should have went "We've been awfully sorry lately, haven't we?"
You get free tickets for helping out sick people?
Dammit, I KNEW I should have gone to med school instead of law school!
"and told them buyers not to tell Southwest employees that they bought the tickets."
Need to edit that "them" there.
Does a day go by that I don't read a story about someone trying to get over and game the system? Its seems whatever is done for good is twisted by the criminal mind.
I wonder where the wire fraud comes in. Does selling stolen goods online constitute "wire fraud?" I would think that to be "tubes fraud."
My wife is a physician, and has helped ill passengers on a few occasions. One time on United, we did in fact get vouchers for a free ticket.
The other times, we got nothing (obviously, she would help regardless - she isn't looking for a payout).
But, it is not easy for her to help. She is a pediatrician, so doesn't have a lot of experience working with adult problems (usually, the people that are having problems are old people, having heart attacks, or other "adult" problems).
Bottom line, these problems happen more often than you would think, and getting any sort of "Thank You" happens much less often than it should.
It is awful that the SW employees would take advantage of these situations, and take just rewards out of the pockets of good Samaritans.
Worst scam ever. "Oh btws, person I have no reason to trust, please don't tell anyone where you got these from!" There's apparently something about trying to pull one over on a company that makes people lose all common sense.
@NotStimulated_GitEmSteveDave: Oh, certainly. As rdwarrior mentioned, that's probably what happened. I was just saying, it's not like they needed 1400 or 5600 recent incidents for those tickets to be around.
Also, it may be accounting doesn't "see" the vouchers until they're used. Which is the problem you get when you rely on "seeing" instead of, well, seeing.
Note to self: Take several dozen "sick" strangers as guests on next trip.
the forum-goers over at slick deals have finally gone too far...
@rockasocky: So instead of waiting for ambulances to drop off sick people at the hospital, you're chasing them.
No offense intended, I just couldn't resist :)
Benk1342: Possibly, but those vouchers should be accountable and sequentially numbered, just like checks. I don't see how the person could have gotten away with "grabbing" them without falsifying company records. That may make a difference in the charges agains the employee.
@NotStimulated_GitEmSteveDave: Nice! I cas see it now: "Don't worry, honey, I'm about to 'book' our flight to Florida right...what? THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!!"
So the 10 will use the money to hire good lawyers, get off and spend the rest of the dough. Don't you love our justice system?
@ViperBorg - Facebook is the new AOL.: Facebook will end up exactly like AOL is now, you're right on that.
I just hope FB doesn't start shipping out cd coasters too.
I worked a code on a plane a few years ago. I am an RN. They wanted to get me to fill out paperwork and although they did not offer anything I did not want to fill out their paperwork either.
The patient died, and I gave the police my information and the airline already had it. Had they offered any compensation I would have declined it for any number of reasons, but most significantly it is just what you do. If I can help somebody you help them. If the pilot had a shoe emergency I am sure all of the shoe repair guys on the plane would have helped out too. You just do what you can when you can.
@rockasocky: Beats the hell out of US Airways...a family member who's a doctor was on a transcon flight with me, and the overhead page asked for a medical professional. After they radioed the licensing info to the ground and all that fun stuff, said family member quickly discovered that the "patient" who suddenly fell was experiencing hypoglycemia. I was simply awestruck (in a bad way) when the flight attendant came up to us later on and asked to pay $2 for the orange juice that was used to quickly bring the patient's sugar level up!
Wrote a quick letter to corporate and they said that it's policy not to give financial compensation for medical assistance. (I never asked them for any financial compensation, I just pointed out how idiotic their flight crew was acting)
@boogermike: Check out my post above about a med. assist incident on US Airways!
Nice of your wife to help, and I know that 99% of docs wouldn't think of charging for services....but somehow I feel that it's unreasonable to ask a doc to render services for free. Imagine what would happened if a flight attendant went to the doc's office, and the office manager asked her to pass out ginger ale and peanuts to everyone in the lobby!
@Urgleglurk:
Knowing Southwest and their overall culture, I somewhat doubt that they bother with keeping a tight grip on vouchers. They truly trust their employees, and empower them to give away free stuff without worrying about needing to justify it to the boss. Sadly, they may need to change their policy now.
@feckingmorons: While I agree that anyone that's capable should help out...all the training and schooling that it took to become an RN wasn't free. You're performing a service that, on the ground, would cost hundreds, easily. The LEAST an airline should do is to reimburse the traveling party.
Once again, doctors/nurses don't ask patients who are flight attendants to pass out ginger ale an peanuts in the lobby, so why should you have to provide services with no compensation? If you weren't onboard, they would have had to divert the aircraft, pay their crew, pay extra landing fees + fuel, mess up connecting flights, etc.
The best experience was on a Singapore Airlines flight, where there was a med. emergency that required my family member's attention for about an hour. It was a night flight, and we were in business class so that we could catch some zzzz's and be productive as soon as we landed.
The flight attendant almost insisted that we accept their offer of:
1) They gave us a day of use of a car & driver
2) They directly took our bags and placed them in our hotel room, which they upgraded
3) They offered to allow us to change our return flight free of charge, and they were even willing to pay any extra fees on connecting airlines
4) They gave us a pair of first-class round-trip vouchers
Did they have to do any of that? Of course not...but it shows that they truly care about their customers. As a result of that incident, I've flown Singapore countless times since..
The worst experience was the US Airways indicent I mentioned above, where they charged the doc that was assisting $2 for the orange juice that she gave to someone with dangerously low blood sugar!
Btw, you mentioned that the pax passed away... did they tell you to wait until the aircraft has reached the gate and the body is removed from the plane before you pronounced it dead? Most airlines (including us) prefer that no one is declared dead on the aircraft, since that results in a long quarantine period for the plane.
@madog: Yeah, that's all I used those for.
Although, kudos on the people that collected all the AOL cd's that they could, and delivered them back to AOL. That was EPIC WIN!
Southwest had 5600 incidents with seriously injured or ill passengers recently? Seems pretty high...
But, kudos to SW for doing this, let's hope the tickets get into the right hands.