Originally Posted by Annandaler
I was doing transcons twice-a-month on UA for several years in the late '60s, as well as tons of other domestic trips on through the '70s. They had an Executive Air Travel Program where you sent in copies of your itineraries and they sent you updated stickers to add to a wall plaque. I still have that plaque, and I still have my 100,000 Mile Club card which gave you hush-hush access to VIP lounges (in the smaller stations, like IAD in the '60s) and early Red Carpet Clubs in large stations, like LAX. This was all basically by invitation (the LAX club was always populated with Hollywood celebs being escorted out of public view). Unfortunately, none of this flying activity carried forward into MP.
The reason for the "hush-hush" nature was the CAB (Civil Aeronautics Board) reguation of fares and tariffs - long before DOT was born. The CAB rules prohibited the airlines from giving one customer a perk (lounge access) that wasn't offered to every passenger on the same/similar fare. Airline de-regulation eliminated the CAB, and allowed the emergence of FT programs as we know (and love/hate) them today.
Hey ANNANDALER!
You're absolutely correct...it was the CAB and not DOT. I was just a kid then but I remember my father telling me to keep my yap shut about private club rooms and about being given things like courtesy tickets for Pan Am's helicopter service from JFK to Battery Park (I can still remember that we'd depart from Gate 8 directly across from the 2nd Floor Clipper Club...Pan Am had two amazing clubs at JFK that were swankier than even the Playboy Club). Your memory is right on about the celebrities that were whisked into and out of the clubs. I got to chat to Dick Van Dyke at LAX about a week after Mary Poppins had just started playing in movie theatres and felt like I had met royalty; I saw other celebrities but usually didn't know exactly who they were. But I was never more star struck than when I was sitting in the Club at JFK and recognized my boyhood hero chatting on the telephone. I asked my father if it would be OK to say hello and ask him for an autograph. My dad said it would be improper because he wasn't a TV or movie star and he deserved his privacy. Two years later he was running for president. The man was Senator Robert Kennedy.