JD1905

The greatest thing this forum has taught me is not about status, tier point runs or milage deals. It has been about my legal rights and what to do in the event of disruption or inconvenience.

If I have a flight cancellation, I smile, know it will get sorted and i�ll likely come out of the other side a few quid better off.

If my bag goes missing then I think of it as a shopping trip at the airlines expense.

I love travelling and have near Zero stress because of how well informed I am from all the members of the forum - and if it wasn�t for being on here that probably wouldn�t be the case.

JapesUK

Huh?

ratechaser

You might as well ask what we did before Google.

Or, for the more venerable here (e.g. those with an 'uncle' honorific), what did we do before those Neanderthal cave drawings?

GM1985

It�s a clich�d term, but FlyerTalk is a broad church, and the BA board perhaps one of the broadest. Some of the topics also mystify me - for instance, the gold greeting thread. And I somewhat agree with you on the menus discussion - advanced knowledge of a particular menu on a given flight has limited value to me. But clearly does to others given the traffic those discussions get.

Other topics I find truly fascinating, such as the Ask The Staffer thread. We are extremely lucky to get insights from former and current cabin and flight crew of what goes on behind the curtain.

And the educational value of others is hard to overstate: how to handle disruption and knowing your rights during IRROPS, how to maximise value from BAEC, EC261 issues, guides to connecting and navigating the LHR tunnels. The effort that has gone in to building the collective knowledge and wisdom posted here - by a group of unpaid volunteers - is really remarkable, and I�m grateful to have benefited from it.

PUCCI GALORE

Many a true word is spoken in jest.

what did we do? Well we did not live on our Smartphones and indeed back then some people knew how to play the system and the rest of us didn�t. When I came to FT this Forum was already getting its characters. Some were funny. Others were pedantic.

I cannot even remember how I discovered this place never mind what I did before.

JapesUK

Senility comes to us all at one time or another. Personally I struggle to remember what I had for breakfast

JapesUK

I travelled extensively in my twenties and thirties, now decades later the rose tinted spectacles may be out but… The soft product was way better, the customer service was exemplary. The overbooking of planes was constant and I made small fortunes by self-offloading repeatedly in the same Friday night, sometimes not flying until Saturday afternoon. But when it went wrong it went very wrong and you had no recourse, And, it was EXPENSIVE! I was travelling solely for business back then, now I travel solely for leisure. I would not have been able to contemplate the amount of flying I do today back in the day, irrespective of income. IMHO its easier today, but not ‘better’ from a hedonistic viewpoint.

I’d say not, the magic of flying is sitting in an armchair inside a tin can tens of thousands of feet in the air and being magically transported to distant climes in a relative blink of an eye

Bread and Iffit in our house…. Iffit had anything on it you were lucky!

Pigeon49

If only my untold hours on FT had done me an ounce of good during the 12 hours of my life I lost recently at DEL.
I had to sit on the ground side chairs designed at Le Maison de Sade for 9 bloody hours until the BA counter
opened and I could get to the lounge. The lounge, I might add, where finding a teaspoon is worthy of a FT thread.

DeathSlam

https://www.flyertalk.com/articles/e...ed-flight.html

PLeblond

Without FT, I would never had attained status on leisure travel. 4 other people around me would have never attained status. I wouldn't have discovered amazing things like the Micronesian Island Hopper, or dreamt I could have flown F in a 747-8 and visited the FCT in FRA. I would never have met a great group of plane geeks at a Do, or heard as many amazing stories of cool trips.

I would also probably have a little more sanity and a lot more money in my retirement plan, not to mention the countless hours spent online here and searching for flights.

As addictions go, flying isn't too bad.

Happy travels.

Crampedin13A

I used to do things like go to the BA city ticket office at Bay and Bloor in Toronto and be handed an impressive Landor ticket jacket with a paper ticket in it. There were the OAG paper guides I got every month and of course the monthly magazine precursor to FlyerTalk. That was invaluable for learning the benefits of all the frequent flyer programs that were also much more rewarding in those times. I also recall the airlines and AMEX for example mailing some amazing promotions

fruitcage

Instead of hours on FT, some of us used to spend hours browsing the BA timetable book that they sent out to members.

jahason

We used to go out to play with friends.

above the clouds

Fly LHR to HNL in economy, twice.
Once via SFO on United then Air Canada via Vancouver.

Then I found Flyertalk and the next time flew J routing LHR-DUB-LHR-NYC-LAX-SFO. On the way back our flight got cancelled and they dared to offer HNL-LAX-LHR, so I spend 3h on the phone to AA on my last day in Paradise to be routed HNL-LIH-PHX-LAX-NYC-LHR. That roundtrip cost �3.5 total for 3 people at the time, and a little bit of our sanity

BA or bust

Before discovering FT I used to spend Airmiles on s/h holidays with the family.

After FT it was family holidays in J, sometimes F.

As many have said, thank you to everybody who contributes their wisdom.