Unfortunately, that is not a reason for starting a new thread. If a topic is being discussed in an existing thread, all discussion relating to that topic should be in the existing thread.

Starting a new thread to meet "some great people" is, unfortunately, not a good enough reason to start a new thread.

And, yes, there is tremendous harm to the Flyertalk community when existing threads are broken off into new threads for no legit reason (and, meeting "some great people" doesn't count). Can you imagine if you were searching for the answer to a question and had to go through multiple threads just because the conversation broke off? Isn't that the point of a topic being discussed in one thread (so that all the information relating to that topic is in one thread)?