CHICAGO, April 1, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- FlyerTalk.com, the world's largest frequent flyer community, today announced the launch of the world's largest airline forum in response to the United and Continental merger. Effective today, FlyerTalk.com Members participating in FlyerTalk.com's United Airlines and Continental Airlines discussion boards can now participate in a combined discussion board representing both carriers.
"We are very pleased to offer the largest airline discussion board in the world," said Richard Baum, a longtime FlyerTalk moderator. "With more than two million posts across more than 100,000 threads between our current United and Continental discussion boards, we expect this new board to become the largest airline discussion board in the world."
Moderators from both current United and Continental boards will collectively moderate the new discussion board. "It can be a challenge to keep the peace at times with so many active participants," said FlyerTalk moderator Brad Mixner. "Aside from an occasional flare-up, however, participants are typically reasonable and are very knowledgeable."
Classic discussion threads from both discussion boards will be retained in the new forum. Many popular threads such as The Penalty Box (Continental), What Were You Compensated and What Did You Get? (United), and the Annual Limerick Competition (Continental) will be retained in the new discussion board.
Other discussion threads from the existing discussion boards will be converged into single threads in the new forum. Some of these merged threads include:
- United Club Meetings (merge of Red Carpet Club meetings and Presidents Club meetings)
- Celebrity Sightings (merge of similar threads from each board)
- Ask UA Insider (merge of Ask UA Insider and Ask CO Insider)
FlyerTalk anticipates the new forum will allow members to discuss in one consolidated forum a variety of unresolved service concerns, such as first class snack baskets, on-board entertainment, seat padding, lounges, Channel 9, and various other nuances between the merging carriers’ amenities.
United representatives have been very supportive of the discussion board merger. "It will be great to have all of our customers together under one roof, where we have streamlined the handling of customer issues," said one company representative. "I used to have to switch back and forth between the Continental and United boards to discern issues, and of course issues we handled these issues differently across companies. For example, on a like issue across both airlines, I would sometimes have to tell the Continental customer that it was strictly against policy, while handing out frequent flyer miles like candy to the United customer."
Later this month, United plans to announce several changes to its MileagePlus program that would be of interest to Flyertalk.com members, and doing so in a combined discussion environment will help the airline disseminate the information as well as interact with and gather feedback from its customers. Company officials said there are still several items to be decided, such as fleet integration schedules, cabin class names, million-miler program benefits, and the rollout of United's EconomyPlus and in-flight entertainment products to the combined fleet. "Once we finalize our in-flight entertainment plan, it will be great to announce it on Flyertalk, in one place," said one official. "It will be a wonderful day when we can jump on FlyerTalk and announce the deployment personal TVs to the United fleet so our international United customers won’t have to watch Dodgeball on the main screen while flying to Sydney."
Frequent travelers have also been welcoming of the converged forum. "I often find myself posting the same question in two places, then getting in trouble twice for doing it," said D.Y. KWIA, a FlyerTalk Evangelist. "Now I have just one place to post it, which means I can only get in trouble once."
United Continental Holdings CEO Jeff Smisek commented on the new combined discussion board and said he thinks he likes this change. He said in a CNN interview, "We’re a very big forum now. Other forums should fear us."
The moderators of the combined forum, titled United Mileage Plus (Consolidated), welcome the opportunity to oversee a positive environment in the “united” forums. “We have a sense of humor and really try to have fun. Really, we do” said Mixner.
FlyerTalk.com Launches World's Largest Single Airline Discussion Board (April Fool's)
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