I have a hard time feeling sympathetic to either party here. Clearly the man was violating the terms of the contract with speculative bookings and booking seats for his luggage under fake names. OTOH, the airline clearly intended for these to be like lifetime gym memberships where people buy them and then hardly use them (an unrealistic expectation for something that cost $250K in 1980's dollars) and was looking for any way possible to cancel their obligations once this didn't play out as hoped.