Rabbi Frequent Flyer Binyomin Ginsberg Loses Supreme Court Appeal on Miles
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a Minnesota rabbi who claimed he was cut from an airline’s frequent flier program for earning too many miles.
The court issued its unanimous ruling on Wednesday.
Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg was one of Northwest Airlines’ top fliers when he was cut from its program in 2008. Northwest has since been absorbed by Delta.
The rabbi, who acquired his frequent flier miles by consulting with educational organizations throughout the country, says the airline was targeting top miles earners. Northwest counters that Ginsberg complained too frequently — 24 times in a seven-month period.
Ginsberg reached the highest level of the WorldPerks program in 2005 before being dropped from the program in 2008, after Northwest and Delta announced their merger.
He sued the airline, claiming breach of contract. The airline said its contract allowed it to cancel membership for abuse of the program.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO