Here's one for the old-timers: How many of you out there invented the mileage run? In other words, if someone else somewhere that you hadn't heard about at the time hadn't probably gotten to it first, could you claim to have invented the whole exercise?

To qualify, you'd probably have to pre-date FlyerTalk and would have needed to have felt your way through unaided to being able to use the tools to construct increasingly sophisticated "inefficient" bookings to maximize mileage.

Would imagine that a few people with travel-agent backgrounds could have done it, as well as some "outsiders" who learned tools like the (should be legendary) easySABRE.

My own experience came in stages: first being able to check alternate departure cities (BHM rather than ATL, taking WN, etc., on EAASY SABRE around 1989). Then alternate departure dates to lower the fare (ANYTHING to avoid dealing over the phone and often not getting quoted the lowest fare). Then checking lots of cities blindly for spot specials ("dream maps" was still a distant dream). That gets into 1992 and the great fare war of that year, with $125-150 transcon RTs. Didn't even KNOW about elite status and that whole part of the game until the card was in the mail and I was getting unexpected upgrades for the first time ever.

Breakthrough #1 was looking deeper into the screens on easySABRE to pick 3-or even 4-segment complete routings. But it still took another 2 years to get to breakthrough #2 and looking up valid connecting cities and piecing together even more bizarre itins, segment by segment.

Though easySABRE is missed, the online tools now overall are much more sophisticated than 9 years ago, and having something like ITA to construct the itins or any number of sites to find the spot specials would have saved untold hours vs. the old ways. FlyerTalk would have also shortened the learning curve greatly.

Anybody else out there re-invent the wheel in pre-FlyerTalk days? Surely there must be quite a few out there...