Man eats free for a year in airport lounge before cancelling ticket for full refund

As a travel company, we sometimes find ourselves explaining the differences in prices of airline tickets to our clients. How could one ticket cost twice as much as another, when both are flying to the same place? Typically, the most expensive tickets are ones which give the traveller the most flexibility, be it flight changes, how much is refundable with a cancellation, etc.

Well one man in China has seemed to understand this in ways no one else did. Purchasing a first class, fully refundable ticket on a major Chinese domestic airline, from his hometown of Xian (famous for the Terracotta Warriors), he began eating daily at the VIP lounge – for free. Anyone with a first-class ticket get’s privileged access to the VIP lounge. Over the course of a year, he re-booked his ticket 300 times. It wasn’t long before the airline and airport started recognizing him, but were in the difficult position of it actually being legal. As the year dragged on, the man was apparently ‘confronted’ by the airline, where he promptly cancelled his ticket… for a full refund.

Sources:

• Man uses first plane ticket to eat for a year
• How One Plane Ticket Let A Guy Eat For Free For A Year
• China Eastern Airlines passenger uses first class ticket for free meals