when I first stumbled upon this forum back in 1997

That entry date beats everybody else - congratulations

Thank you for your post Koala, I myself was only able to be reckognized again by SilverWings (when trying to get online) 3 years ago, when I changed my home-adress to a friend's adress in NY.

And yes, the changement that only flights originating in North America, made the program rather uninteresting for me at that time.

The changements of the program in general 3 years ago made me jumping ships of my prefereed FrequentFlier program to miles&more, crediting only a hotel stay to MileagePlus from time to time now (to not lose my actual balance of miles with them).

I probably still have the original terms of the program somewhere printed out in a file and might check what their rights of completly abandoning the perks for paid lifelong members they have or don't have.