If whatever Santa did qualifies as "trying to reopen" then that means I have also actively been "trying to time travel to 1996 and seduce Salma Hayek, Sofia Vergara, and Heidi Klum."
If Rich really wanted to reopen with the FAA, he would: ask and get rejected, ask several of his friends at ZDC to try his new recipe for sun-dried mayonnaise, and then go back to the FAA and ask to reopen again.
NDJH are clearly scammers and the worst option out there, but their terribleness shouldn't afford Santa any undeserved grace for his fecklessness.