Tiron Alexander is soon to be sentenced and faces decades in prison after he was caught impersonating flight attendants dozens of times in order to get free flights
A canny traveller managed to blag his way onto 120 flights for free by impersonating cabin crew.
At the moment, flying is expensive business. A shortage of aircraft due to supply-side issues, and spiking demand post-Covid, has sent ticket prices soaring. In the last year, the consumer price index for airline tickets shot up by 25% in the US, with similar rises in the UK.
As heavy on the purse strings as jetting off somewhere nice may now be, not many would-be passengers have gone to the same lengths to save cash as Tiron Alexander.
According to a release filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, on June 5 the 35-year-old was convicted of wire fraud and entering into a secure area of an airport by false pretenses.
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He did so with the view of securing free flights through the booking system meant for airline employees, and managed to bag 120 using the scheme.
“From 2018 to 2024, Alexander booked free flights on an airline carrier’s website that were only available to pilots and flight attendants,” the Attorney’s Office writes.
“Over the 34 flights, Alexander claimed through the airline carrier’s website application process — a process that required an applicant to select whether they were a pilot or flight attendant and provide their employer, date of hire, and badge number information — that he worked for seven different airlines and had approximately 30 different badge numbers and dates of hire.”
Tiron managed to secure 120 flights for free by claiming he was a flight attendant working for seven different airlines. It is not completely clear how he managed to repeatedly gain access to the internal systems that flight attendants use with different airlines.
Why nonexistent badge numbers were not flagged by at least one of them is not clear either.
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“The evidence at trial also showed that Alexander posed as a flight attendant on three other airline carriers. Ultimately, Alexander booked more than 120 free flights by falsely claiming to be a flight attendant,” the statement from the Attorney’s Office adds.
U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra is scheduled to sentence Alexander on August 25, 2025.
He faces up to 20 years in prison for the wire fraud counts and up to 10 years for entering the airport’s secure area, according to the indictment.
Although there is no suggestion that he did anything wrong or illegal, Steven Rothstein is another high-profile example of a passenger who loved a free or cheap flight.
The New York investment banker bought an American Airlines all-you-can-fly AAirpass in the 1980s and then set about using it to fly around the world, in first class, several times a month for 25 years.
American Airlines ended up growing tired of his relentless round-the-world travelling and decided to kick him off it in 2008. Despite his best legal efforts, Steven was unable to get the pass reinstated.