With that I understand better why it was removed. It would have perhaps been better to acknowledge this directly earlier on in the discussion which may have eliminated the need for a lot of posts questioning the motive behind the removal. I had noticed when searching recently using Google for a thread that I remembered being on FlyerTalk but couldn't remember where it was that the FT hits were quite a way down the results. I took to specifying site:flyertalk.com in my Google searches for FT content to bring them to the top, but this obviously would not work for someone not looking specifically for a FT thread or not knowing how to specify a site specific search on Google.

+1 100%. Without knowing the in's and out's of the SEO I am hopeful this could work. It would be a solution that solves everyone's problem.