While some individuals might send daring text messages or belt out karaoke after a few drinks with friends, entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban took it to another level by spending six figures on a lifetime flight pass.
In 1990, at the age of 32, Cuban had just become a millionaire after selling his software company, MicroSolutions, to CompuServe for $6 million. Reflecting on that night during a recent appearance on the “Club Shay Shay” podcast, he shared, “My friends and I went out and really celebrated. They asked me what I planned to do with all that money, and I replied, ‘I’m not interested in cars or houses, but I do travel a lot for work.’”
Cuban was unsure whether lifetime flight passes were a real thing, but he picked up the phone and called American Airlines regardless.
“I called them and, in a bit of a daze, asked, ‘Do you guys offer lifetime passes?’” recalled Cuban, now 66. “I managed to get all the details, despite being hungover, and I went ahead and signed up. It started at $125,000, and then I decided to upgrade. I can’t remember the exact amount I ended up paying, but it provided me with nearly unlimited miles for myself and a companion for the rest of my life.”
The AAirpass, introduced in the early 1980s, provided members with unlimited first-class travel for life with the airline, with the purchase price based on the buyer’s age at the time. For Mark Cuban, the $125,000 he spent in 1990 would equate to approximately $300,000 today when adjusted for inflation.
In 1994, American Airlines replaced the AAirpass with a similar program called Airpass, which offered fixed-rate flights for frequent business travelers. However, the airline ceased new memberships and renewals in November 2022 and announced that it would no longer honor the unlimited travel benefits of the Airpass starting in March 2024, as stated on its website.