United used to have a really funny "award." They sent you a funky plastic plaque (I mean really seedy molded plastic that was supposed to look like wood). It had a cheap metal insert saying you were a valued flyer or something. Then every time you went to a city you hadn't been to since they started keeping track, they sent you a little peel-off strip with the city name on it for you to add to the plaque. When you filled up your plaque they sent you another one.

I always felt this was the funniest and crummiest perk I ever got from an airline. I put the plaque up in my office for a while as a joke, but had to take it down because people started to think I was actually serious about it.

This must have been maybe late 70's or something.

On the more serious side, some of us remember when the airline clubs were free, but membership was based on flying 100,000 miles. I was in the United club for a number of years before they started charging at all. Initially, as I recall, they began charging as a result of a class action lawsuit brought by non-frequent flyers alleging that they were being screwed out of the airlines' services simply because they didn't fly much. The airlines theoretically "lost" that one, but in the long run they won, because their solution was to start charging for memberships. Glad I bought mine when life membership was less than $300 and included a free spouse card!