Does AA monitor this board closely enough to know who we are in real life? For example, if we post about something and then communicate with AA about it, AA could figure out who we are, with enough research into our posts.

Thanks.

Definitely possible for this to be done, either in an automated or manual fashion. It's a matter of whether or not they really WANT to connect the dots.

Unless it involves a very spectacular incident that would draw the attention of AA management and corporate security I think it very, very unlikely that AA would be able to figure out someone's true identity. Furthermore, given the types of threads that are posted on FT I doubt AA would much really care.

I am going to guess here.


AA may care about a post involving something fraudulent that they could not figure out on their own. Double bookings, phantom bookings, etc, can probably be tracked better with their own systems than looking at flyer talk. Some post that may raise a red flag (re: fraudulent intention) may raise a flag, otherwise....nah.

As far the usual FT whining about bad FAs, horrible A319s, upgrade shenanigans, LAX-JNB new route speculation, etc, I want to bet they couldn't care less.

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AA doesn't much care about or for FlyerTalk as a whole or the AA | A forum, coming from the very top. We are mostly perceived as whiners and chiselers, to the best of my knowledge, people who aren't worth much to AA but continually try to milk the airline for what we can gain. (There's a touch of truth residing in every stereotype - that's what makes stereotyping so resistant to demythologizing.) And it has been heard from reliable sources Mr. Parker himself has commented negatively on some of the negative depictions and characterizations that have been used against him in this forum.

It's all too bad, because at one time AA had a social media lurker here, and AFAIK some AA people were actually contemplating involvement with FlyerTalk - that idea was quickly nipped in the bud by those in the executive suites.

I do believe AA has as skewed a view of FT as some may have of Mr. Parker, and I believe there was a chance at some mutually beneficial relationship that possibly would have offered us informational clarity and detail, as well as a platform for some aspects of feedback to AA. As things exist currently, we'll never know.

AA does have other internet venues and channels they consider more productive and useful; they do not include FlyerTalk, even if other service providers maintain an active presence on FT.

However, AA Corporate Security - AAdvantage Fraud does maintain some awareness of FT and do look for obvious and flagrant violations of AAdvantage Terms and Conditions or Cinditions of Carriage. Their vigilance has resulted in several FT members being held accountable for selling or trading various instruments (e.g. selling awards or selling miles to brokers). They're quite capable at putting 2+2 together, gathering data from various sources including aa.com accounts, transactions and information shared in various internet venues (including eBay, Craig's List and even FlyerTalk.

I'm assuming they may use sophisticated spider technology to alert them of certain words or phrases and uses in various internet venues, and occasionally browse here with personnel who are signed up members with sufficient anonymous and innocuous posts to access The Coupon Connection (now closed to all AA transactions), to see if a particular individual who has been brought to Corp Sec's attention has posted here, etc.

Agree with these assessments for the most part.

The do, of course, have a list of "influencers/opinion-makers" (they use other terminology) who's posts on social media (including FT) they follow more closely and do so in a pretty comprehensive and advanced way.

IMO that's a pretty good way to put it.

Met women twice in years-ago boarding lines who claimed they were employed by AA in this capacity. FlyerTalk was mentioned as something they followed at one point in the distant past, but being a bulletin board they had long-sinse declared us old people who were not really embracing new technology and moved on. They were much more concerned about serious travel bloggers and twitter handles with high follower counts. Meaning if something negative was put out they would contact them promptly to try and reverse the opinion. To paraphrase 1984, some posters are equaller than others.

You can decide if you believe they were whom they said they were, but their negative description of a Flyer Talker might actually describe me well.

Haha. I guess forums sort of date us. However, the 140-word limit makes it harder to discuss how to game the AA system.

I think the main thing is FT must just have that much smaller of a footprint, compared to twitter, in the AA space. It's a lot easier for any random joe/jane to sign up for a twitter account and complain, then it is to sign up for FT and post something, so AA cares less because we don't have the numbers.

I believe this post as well as what JDiver said a few posts up. The sad reality is that FT (and many of us) are an anachronism, and nobody cares what we think anymore.

Internet Brands gives us this little FT playground because they can still make some pennies on the intrusive ads that not all of us have blocked yet.

I wouldn't agree that it's as grim as all that, it's more complicated.

That said, Ben mentioned me very briefly on OneMileAtATime yesterday (in his write up of Etihad F) and I got like 35 new Twitter followers (and counting) in just a few hours as a result, simply by him linking to my profile.

So, certainly true that blogs have taken over a good amount of the attention/weight in the last few years, from such time that FT had no competition.

When I worked at America West, we were encouraged to follow that forum here on Flyertalk. Of course after I left, the people there who knew me knew my posts. There's still a few from back then left.

Officially, I believe a few people from the communications team do monitor Flyertalk, and will try to follow-up with users if they can when they see something that is worth doing (such as someone posting about an employee, cancelled flight, etc.)
Unofficially, I hear from many employees around the company who follow and some post here on Flyertalk.

I'd tend to believe that.

And if they gave it some thought, they might be surprised at some of our posters' value to AA. But we're obviously not in a position to tell them that.

They certainly do pay attention to Jonathan Spira, Gary Leff, "Lucky" et al because they know they have a following, for instance.

I never post anything too specific, like "I was on AA 123 on 01Jun in seat 3A when this happened." But I do read posts like that on occasion.

Perhaps it's time for FT to own its content (if that's legally possible or maybe they already do). Require login before viewing any posts and perhaps charge a fee to commercial enterprises who want to view and/or post to FT.......terms of use require disclosure as a corporate entity (maybe this already exists). In general restrict open access to FT (kind of like how Delta stripped ExpertFlyer from using/displaying their info). In other words, FT controls access. I am not necessarily advocating for this.....just food for thought.