Though I haven't been regularly traveling as long as many on this board have, I do recall when Independence Air started up, there was a heck of a lot of buzz created as it was an LCC that competed directly with many routes against United. It brought down quite a few regional fares ex-IAD. VX is competing against some major routes, but not nearly the amount that Indy Air had. Indy's now, of course, out of business.

And I, for one, am very glad that FlyerTalk had an Independence Air forum and has preserved that information for posterity. That is exactly what "THE" internet frequent air travel board should do.

The question is whether there would have been the same amount of posts and information exchange in the absence of a forum for FlyI. Would it have taken place in the ONSAFFP forum (and then archived)? Or would there have been fewer posts? I don't know how you definitively answer that, but I know that I certainly posted a decent amount about FlyI and would have done so had discussion of the carrier been confined to ONSAFFP. Because what drove me to post about FlyI was not the presence of a FlyI forum, but interesting things to post about- fares, routes, service, planes, FFP. @:-)

But there is also the very important matter of organization. Someone wanting to look at the history of FlyI need not wade through hundreds of threads about other North and South America FFPs or use an often-dicey search function to see how Flyertalkers used and felt about FlyI. It's all in one place. The FlyI forum. As, imho, it should be. @:-)

That was precisely the point I made when the VX forum was originally proposed. Having history back to Day One.

BINGO! I've heard from a few FT'ers who will never come back because of they way they were treated by a few specific TB members with the attitude you describe. I think it's the reason a lot of SQ talk happens on a non-FT site, and why some of the India-airline specific talk will be moving (or grow) off-FT.

A reminder, the subject of this thread is VX.

But what if the concept is so alien to you that you don't think of asking? I'm wouldn't blame people under that circumstance. And this does appear to be a situation in which each side has a lot of trouble conceiving how the other side could have such a different viewpoint. Give people the benefit of the doubt and maybe they'll give it back to you some day when you need it.