The AA chat last night was a disaster.

Aside from the technical problems with the chat software, where AA and many FlyerTalkers could not get into the chat room, most of the few questions posted to Bruce were directly from the TWA FAQ on AA's home page and these questions took up the first half hour of the scheduled time. I was very frustrated to have to wait so long to see Bruce use an answer from the FAQ almost verbatim. And of course, by the time the more difficult questions came on, the software finally crapped out, leaving us with only two important new facts about the AAdvantage program by the end of the session.

May I offer a few suggestions:

1. Would it not be possible to exercise some editorial control over the questions you decide to ask? Sure, those questions were important to someone, or they were asked before the TWA FAQ was posted to AA, but what's wrong with taking all of those questions and publishing them at the beginning of the chat with links to the appropriate resource (in this case, the TWA FAQ on AA's site)? Let your guest answer the questions that don't have satisfactory canned answers, such as the 20 partners question, which I found most enlightening.

2. If for some reason, it's not possible to filter out those questions, how about mixing them up for topic and membership applicability? No doubt there are lots of questions asked by new members, or members who have not done the research on FlyerTalk or on the Airline's site and I understand that these users need to be catered to as well as the top tier members who pretend to know everything, but what would be wrong with asking a "newby type" question followed by a "top tier type" question and allow everyone to learn at least a little bit that meets their needs.

3. With the exeption of Elmhurst Nick's unanswered question regarding the dilution of the EXP program, it appears that all of the questions were submitted in advance. Wouldn't it be nice if the guest could see those questions in advance and have the answers ready so that you could post a large number of questions and answers right at the beginning of the chat -- or use those "pre-answered questions" to fill in the space as some hunt-and-peck executive types out his reply?

Anyway, one way or another, I hope you're able to fix the technical problems and improve the editorial content to improve future chats.

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