FlyerTalk Arvostelua 6

It's great for travel/flight advice. There is so much knowledge from members about current topics, and you can search for so much past information.

Avoid any discussion forums like OMNI/PR. You'll see a lot of back and forth between frequent members. Don't think you can join in. You can't, unless you're one of the people the moderators happen to like. I've heard of people getting banned temporarily or permanently for doing the same things that frequent posters do.

It's best to stick to travel advice forums.

I've been a "member" of FlyerTalk since 2014. I was likely reading as a non-member well before that. In 2014 I posted a question in the American Airlines forum. I got a couple of worthwhile responses, then a snot who said something like "try it and let us know". I simply commented that he shouldn't waste his time writing worthless drivel like this; he could have answered the question in the same amount of time. My retort was deleted by the moderator and I was warned. Really?

For the next 10 years I found more friendly, worthwhile forums. Mind you, I still would use FlyerTalk for reference searches, but posting didn't seem attractive; I had great alternate places for this. While Covid destroyed one of them (made a ghost town out of the forum) ... I still have friendly places.

A couple of months ago FlyerTalk's periodic email had an article that caught my eye. I read it, went to the discussion link and found myself participating. This was also in the American Airlines area, go figure. It was a lively, fairly heated discussion ... the kind you might get with 2 sides of hard-heads and most not seeing any grey areas. I was moderated twice (messages deleted), but these messages deserved it. I reworded a bit and they posted.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a moderator came in and deemed the thread full of off-topic posts. Really? I don't think so. The topic was broad enough and even the posts I adamantly disagreed with were "on topic". The entire thread was shut down with no signs of it coming back in the future.

I won't be sucked back into any FT discussions again. The moderators are too many and a single czar-like wannabee can abruptly stop things. The value of their forums remains extremely low to me, even with a 10-years-later retry.

FlyerTalk has a Politics section. The administrators and Moderators are left-wingers who silence and ban conservative voices. A totally different set of rules for leftists than for conservatives.
Don't patronize this site. In fact, I am trying to organize a boycott of the FlyerTalk advertisers. Conservatives need to adopt the tactics of their liberal counterparts.

This site claims to be an independent forum where frequent flyers exchange information about travel and experiences. I registered a while ago as a pretty frequent business traveller.

I don't have a lot of time to contribute to it but I make a few comments. A couple of things have become obvious over time. One is that criticism of certain airlines is absolutely not welcome and it will be removed without reference or any fact checking.

The second is that a moderators word, even when it's easy to demonstrate with facts that they are wrong is final.

Third, there are some posters, many of them moderators making so many posts and I'm talking hundreds each week that they cannot possibly be travelling at all but more appear to be in the pay of certain airlines to push the brand. As they are all handles rather than user's real names, watch out for Corporate Wage Slave, Karfa, Oliver2002 and quite a few more. Raising a concern about any of these people who would appear to be funded by airlines with Carol aka SanDiego, the community director will lead to an instant, lifetime ban though what qualifications she may have other than she's probably paid by an airline too is anyone's guess, she certainly lacks any sort of intelligence to run a complex board.

This place is not healthy, sure there is some decent information if you spend time and look carefully but far more of it is advertising from people who post so much they cannot be spending time on planes.

I would say avoid it and believe little of what you read.

This place is an exclusive club which would appear to be there to praise various airlines and any criticism of either the airlines or the moderators leads to you being banned for life. Totally unhealthy.

A friend recommended I give this site a try, I've been a regular business traveller for 20+ years.

I created an account, logged in, spent some time looking around and subscribed to some topics that were relevant and interesting to me. I didn't spend much time but a few days later went back to look more.

I found my account had been locked and I was banned for life apparently for having multiple user accounts which I don't have, I had only just registered. There was a link to a page where I was supposed to be able to challenge this but it didn't work so all in all, a complete waste of time.

Perhaps it's an exclusive little club, it's certainly not open to new members.