This Is Your Elite Flier Speaking

O'Leary, who had already been monitoring the sites for fun, has gone to extreme measures to fulfill his airline obsession, a common trait among many on the Flyertalk forum.

In the late 1990s, he traveled to Beirut to fly on one of the last Boeing 707s in commercial service. Since 1985, he has kept a computerized database of his flights -- including the registration number of each plane -- and the airports (not cities) he has visited. He has logged more than 2,952 flights and 2.4 million miles. He has visited 401 airports in 80 countries -- all marked with tacks on two maps hanging on his office wall. His computer hard drive is full of what he calls "airplane porn" -- photographs of planes in flight.

O'Leary traces his airline obsession to when his family was getting ready to leave on a trip to Florida on April 5, 1979. At his parents' urging, he wrote to American for some memorabilia and received glossy photos of airplanes and brochures. He also got "a nice handwritten letter of encouragement saying I was the youngest person to write asking for this stuff," O'Leary said.

Since being assigned to monitor Flyertalk, http://www.airliners.net and blogs on various Web sites, O'Leary has solved dozes of problems that irritate road warriors. He has posted more than 500 comments in the past year alone on Flyertalk, most answering questions, shooting down rampant rumors or highlighting a change in the airline's frequent-flier program.

"These are free focus groups," O'Leary said. "Every airline executive in his right mind is reading Flyertalk and other sites. If it is bothering these customers, it is probably bothering others who don't post on the sites."

Using the chat rooms and internal customer-complaint databases, O'Leary has easily spotted problems that sparked debates in the online forums. He has closely tracked discussions on how passengers prefer to print their boarding passes, the timing of the airline's automated upgrade system and the cost of premium wines offered at its exclusive airport clubs.

Most of the issues would appear relatively minor to the average flier, but O'Leary said he can't let them fester in today's competitive environment.

"The easy stuff is done," he said. "We are down to these finite details: the printing of individual boarding passes versus printing all boarding passes."

Last summer, for example, a Flyertalker complained about security procedures for Continental's elite travelers transferring from an international flight to a domestic one at the carrier's hub in Houston. The traveler could not understand why there was not a separate security line for elite fliers as there is in the main terminal.

O'Leary, who meets with Flyertalkers about once every three months at impromptu gatherings all over the country, investigated and found out that nobody had thought to put an EliteAccess blue carpet in the security area in the international section or designate a line for the special fliers. Within days, it was set up.

In another instance, he waded into the charged debate over who can get exit rows, a perk generally reserved for those with some sort of elite status. O'Leary discovered that there was no consistent policy at the airline. After initially deciding to allow only the top fliers to reserve those seats, he noticed fliers with lesser status complaining on Flyertalk. The policy was amended to include those fliers, too -- a direct result of feedback on the site, O'Leary said.

Flyertalkers generally agreed that they enjoyed having O'Leary on their forum because he doesn't overwhelm them with company propaganda and usually answers their questions. They said O'Leary's background as an airline fanatic gives him credibility because "he has been through as many airports and delays as the rest of us," said Richard Baum, a frequent visitor to Flyertalk.

O'Leary, who says he admires the Flyertalkers' passion, has not always been their best pal.

Last fall, someone on Flyertalk found relatively inexpensive fares on Continental between Minneapolis and London and posted details about the ticket price in the chat room. The fare was improperly coded, resulting in a $219 one-way ticket that came with too many bonus frequent-flier miles. Flyertalkers couldn't resist. They quickly bought nearly 1,000 round trips -- one traveler purchased 12.

Continental stopped the fare sale only after O'Leary spotted the chat and alerted company representatives.

Still, O'Leary remains embarrassed by the episode. It took him three days to notice the costly discussion.

He was too busy having fun -- hanging out with Flyertalkers in Cleveland.