I think it's understandable if a traveller wants to take as much advantage as possible regarding fares, miles, you name it.
It's understandable as well if the airlines want to get as much revenue as possible. They are actually setting up an extremely intransparent system of fares and rules to do so.

Anyway, everything is in a move. A few guys at the airlines take a decision and sometimes they make a mistake. If they do a mistake, I'm usually sorry for the guy. But quite often "loopholes" are based on clear decisions. However, sometimes they work out differently as originally intended for the airline.

It's basically the power of FT that a lot of those tips and tricks show up before the opportunity is gone. But in some cases airlines started to monitor FT. Sure enough the one airline I'm thinking of wouldn't do that to improve their service, but to see how FTs (edit: frequent travellers are meant) make use of their own rules.

In these cases it's really a good question what we should do. Are we still discussing how to use the system in a smart way in this case? Or are we already causing one or the other airline to rethink their own decisions and systems? I wouldn't like that very much.

Personally I often feel like a victim of robbery when the airlines take advantage of my travel needs and make me pay huge amounts of money. I'm therefore glad to take advantage myself once in a while.

[This message has been edited by newbe (edited 08-05-2002).]