While Flyertalk is Down…

by Gary Leff

Hit the comments here with whatever’s on your mind.  What are you thinking about?  What questions do you have?

Update: No sooner do I publish this and it looks like Flyertalk is beginning to struggle to come back up.  C’mon, you can do it!!

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  3. What is the relative value proposition for priority club points for reward nights or the points + cash options? When does one make sense over the other?

  5. I am a recent convert to FT and am amazed at how many times I have checked since morning to see if it is functioning. I am curious about the amount of time you spend on FT each day esp given that you are the TalkBoard president as well.

  7. I can live without FlyerTalk. I can quit anytime I want to. I’ve gone without it for HOURS at a time. There are times when I don’t even wake up in the middle of the night to check for mileage runs. Honest.

  8. I’m trying to get into FlyerTalk, but it’s really hard for a newbie. The site doesn’t seem very intuitive for someone whose not used to message boarding. Need to figure out if/how to get it to work with my RSS.

  11. It must have been down during that meeting I was in earlier today, because it worked before and afterwards. Great timing!

  12. Ok so it is down again. Sitting in the Westin BKK lounge and thinking I really ought to be out eating something instead of here in the hotel anyway.

  13. Wow, down again? Never used to be this bad when Randy owned it.

    If it stays down, I may actually have to work today.

    Mike

  15. Yep, it’s still down. I saw it trying to come up yesterday afternoon, but apparently it didn’t stay up.

    In other news, my productivity has suddenly improved. 😛

  17. Same for me…. It is really slow…… Have to click refresh several times before the page is brought up. Gave up.

  18. I am FURIOUS with AA! They confirmed me for an upgrade and rescinded it 2 hours before my flight! How are they allowed to do that?

  20. It’s not just FT, it’s Internet Brands. Their site and all the sites they own are down. Must be some pretty big server issues.

  23. Yeah, let’s take ’em to small claims court. Intentional infliction of emotional distress! 🙂

  26. Ok, this is ridiculous… I’ve been trying to get on FT since yesterday- they didn’t even let us know! 🙁

  27. it’s nice to see my ft friends here…i’m glad i’m not the only one having problems with flyertalk.

    really miss it when it doesn’t work, even if it’s not what it once was (what is?).

  28. I checked on Twitter & so far even Randy isn’t sure why site is still down. What will we do if it’s down all weekend!

  29. so all you old-time FTers, what WAS it like back in the day? i’m no longer a newb, having registered in the middle of 2007 or thereabouts, but clearly not a long-time poster.

  30. I can’t believe how addicted to FT I am. How long can this last? I can’t take it much longer……..I’m going off the deep end.

  31. @gobluetwo: Back in 1998, I would post a question and then come back a week later to see if anyone replied.

  32. Maybe they are converting to the new phpbb3?
    Another Forum I use just recently upgraded to that. It has cool features like:
    ‘Friends and Foes’ where you can ignore specific people in the forums and not see their posts, updated private messaging features, the ability to bookmark specific forums, a way to subscribe to topics to be notified when others post in them, more edit features in posts and private messages, and improved security and speed. Long Live Flyer Tyler You make me sit in Bigger seats and have better Hotel rooms for free.

  33. Still down for me. Man, I am feeling the withdrawal. Cold sweat and panick begins to sink in. Wha if there is another 100K credit card bonus out right now? Oh no.

  34. Well thank god it came up for long enough to find that LPB deal from NYC for Aug 10 for $484, still avail end Jan-June and Aug-Oct usually with a Wed or Thurs out

  37. I registered only in Feb of this year. So how was FT like in the old days? Those several comments make me start thinking….

    I am addicted to FT, too….. I agree about the feeling of missing a deal or something…. er… Thx Randy for opening his Wing for us to rant.

  38. I am member #9919, registered when I was 22 in 2002, in the old days, FT would not be down like this, you could find your thread on the first page in like a week after you posted it, now a few minutes later you have like 10 replies

    Going thru withdrawals here too!

  39. @MileageAddict — and today you post a question, hit “Submit”, then hit “Reload” and see the flames coming in 😉

    Ok, I am exagerating about the flames (a bit), but certainly the answers come in rather quickly in many forums.

  42. I don’t think I’ve ever seen web servers run so badly as with Flyertalk.com. I mean, an outage is one thing, but it shouldn’t take this long to resolve.

    The Internet Brands website is slow, but it seems to function. However, none of the sites they own seems to work:
    http://www.internetbrands.com/ib

  43. Still down – my latest Google gold-panning turned up only a few nuggets of information. Apparently all of Internet Brands’ sites have been hacked/attacked. This morning when still able to see the home page of FT, you could see a bogus menu item under “Other Links” that appears to be part of the hackers’ strategy. Dang – now I’ll just have to play online poker.

  44. Perhaps they’re using DL’s IT department to manage it; it seems to work as well as the award calendar does.

  45. Freakin IBB amateurs! How do they manage to take down a high traffic website for an entire day???

  46. To test the theory regarding Internet Brands, I went to a sister site: slowtalk.com they are up and running at what seems to be normal speeds. One of the moderators did post 4 hrs. ago that IB websites had been under attack since yesterday.

  47. I should have printed the information I needed. Never thought flyertalk will be unstable and unavailable.

    Technology fails when you realllllllly need it.

  48. I read a posting on another site that said flyertalk was hacked and had links to a warez/porn site right on the home page

  50. It’s actually kind of quaint that a website can go dark for a couple of days. Kind of like an old fashioned big city “blackout” without electricity!

    Just hope no crazy mileage run or hotel deal pops up in the meantime!

    As far as the “good ol’ days” at flyertalk, I seem to remember the system crashing periodically — just as it does today. It was obviously a smaller community back then, which is both good and bad. Personally, I like the larger size today — more information. Sure, you might have to move faster on a “mistake fare,” but there’s a lot more content these days.

    In the meantime, if you need travel info (as opposed to ff info) consider starting a thread in the forums of tripadvisor. That is definitely an up-and-coming forum — kind of like a more sophisticated Lonely Planet thorn tree.

  51. Good to see many familiar names. I was beginning to think that I had taken one step too far in OMNI/PR

  54. Yesterday I was reading the thread about the guy stranded by Air China in a big snowstorm.

    Lots of nasty comments about Air China. Then someone posts that the Great Firewall of China has blocked Flyertalk !

    With this longer outage today, should be even more fun to see what theories are developed !

  55. Come On FT; the US Air Grand Slam Promotion is gonna end on the 15th & how am I supposed to plan out my final few “Hits”???

  56. Wow! I am going into FT withdrawal. Never realized I depend on the site so much.

    I’ve spent my career in IT ‘fighting fires’. Have to admit, must be a lot of adrenaline and caffeine flowing at Internet Brands right now…

  58. 1. Internet Brands (IB) is a California based new media company that operates online media, community, and e-commerce sites in vertical markets. IB also develops and licenses internet software and social media applications.
    2. IB owns and operates more than 90 websites in various categories.
    3. IB shares (Market Value: $ 316M) are listed on NASDAQ. Neither recently reported third quarter financial results nor the darkness of FT affects their previous share tradings.
    4. IBs income dempends mainly on adds and drives under google shadow.
    5. MileageAddict´s – s/he seems to be a leader of the delusifly named FT “Hotel Deals” forum that attracts “consumers” in the hope to find “error rates” – replay # 33 is out of touch.

  59. How will I get my daily mile fix??
    Good thing I bought gas with my rewards card today, or no miles!
    I am in FT withdrawal and nothing will fix it, not even 10,000 gold $1 Coins!
    I want MY FT!!

  60. Ok, serious withdrawal. Just when there was a fun thread about Vice at Starwood properties beginning to form. Anyone else in Bangkok and want to fill the time normally spent on FT drinking and reminiscing over the good ol’ days of USENET?

  62. I am playing the USAirways Grandslam which end in two days. Does anyone have any experience coaxing from SPG (Starwoods) an immediate transfer to an airline, such that it would be post in time?

  63. Is this a record time for FT to be down? We were at the Mega DO then spent 5 days in Italy, returning yesterday afternoon. Hope everyone made it back okay from Mega DO!!

  66. FT forums are up and running well as of this posting, although I still can’t access the home page.

  68. I just know there’s an Econolodge with a mistake rate for 12 bucks in the middle of Idaho I’m missing out on….. I miss you guys…*sniff*… its just so broken and not working…..*sniff*….

  70. Call me out of touch if you’d like but bottom line, Flyertalk is not as good as it was before IB took over. Oh yeah, we are in day 2 of the outage, right?

  71. Wow I am so glad I found this site with a lot of the usual FT suspects on it! I have been cursing the Chinese and the Great Firewall for the last 2 days, thinking they finally decided FT was too subversive for those of us here in the Middle Kingdom. Guess I fingered the wrong culprits this time. :-))

  75. It’s still impossible to connect from Hong Kong… I reckon it’s nearly 72 hours now that I’ve been suffering withdrawal symptoms.

  83. IBStephanie’s announcement atop all of the FT boards has been extended to “18 November”. The email alert function re new comments is still not hooked up — here, at least. I’ve received one in the four day outage, and it was about someone’s post the prior day.

  84. Ok, while it was previously just inaccessible for me now it seems to be redirecting to some illegal download site.

  85. Oh my word! Flyertalk, PPRuNe, LS1Tech, Yotatech, ClubLexus… are all owned by the same people?!

    Wow, very interesting to see all of these forums where people contribute out of the goodness of their hearts, are actually run by some kind of forum conglomerate….

Comments are closed.