Here's the direct link to post #174.

Tell me about FT Power!

I am surprised that OP wasn't aware of how many such air/hotel/credit cards/freebie "hot" deals were cancelled/stopped due to FT influence.

Very much so.

I've personally been able to identify online passenger complaints and issues with my airline via FlyerTalk and then contact the passenger offline to resolve. These have ranged from Denied Boarding compensation issues to sorting out visa issues to simply making contact with important corporate customers directly when we usually deal just with their agents.

It's not a policy change, but BA updated their staff lounge access cards based on direct FT feedback. ^

Absolutely! Just check out CO Insider's posts in the Continental forum.

For even the modestly traveling, examples of the above abound, but for me, the "real" benefit has been the ability to gain a sense of "empowerment" based upon the experiences and battles (wins & losses) of other FTites.

I take personal credit for Continental having to create a new award category and double the mileage required after I was actually able to book and fly a BKK-NRT-GUM-CNS-GUM-NRT-BKK award on 25K OnePass miles some years ago. Such Asia-Australia bookings from NW-only cities involving NW as well as CO metal were basically impossible and I slipped mine through (after multiple other rejected attempts) only because of SARS cancellations. Three months later they had the new category and a 50K requirement if the itin had NW metal. Others have tried to dispute my claim of credit, but I stand by it. And I'm glad it probably cost them many times the amount to create, police and administer such a narrowly focused award as they "lost" by the booking getting through.

"One airline can make a difference"? Pfah! Flyertalk can.

As others have posted, CO listens to FTers. We generally won’t hear about how issues are addresses but when they can publicly comment on something that’s changing because of FT, they are more than happy to mention it here. Now listen is one thing and caving into everyone’s varied preferences and desires is something else.

To give a slight idea how much they value FT feedback, the audience In This Photo are FT members. If you look at the larger version of the photo you will see on the opposite wall the CEO Larry Kellner and the President Jeff Smisek. Along the back wall on the right are many other CO employees, all giving up their personal time on a Saturday, w/o pay, to host FT members.

Lots of useful information in this community, a large reader base, and a lot of meaningful discussions. An excellent place for travel companies to check consumer response to company policies and decisions.

Yes, it makes a difference.

I must concur that FT has made for several changes at CO both big and small. In general it is just nice to have a company that listens to their customers and wants to try and make the customer experience all that much better.

And we have a direct line into the website/IT end of things, with a very pro-active, very helpful lurker. Now, if we report a bug on the website, it gets investigated and usually gets sorted ^^^

Although even before we got an official lurker to help us with this (and they're a gem), BA used us for this anyway.

I recall when they launched a new online route map, as quickly as we were reporting errors on it on the FT thread, the errors were magically being corrected on the route map. Flying geekdom meets IT geekdome for a good end result