http://vegadventure.weebly.com/
British Airways started using the above website as promotion, and releasing press releases linking back to the blog. Basically some "random" guy decides to fly some pointless convoluted route for 45 hrs to get Gold Status. Gold status means you get to use the first class lounge and hammer the free booze. On the blog he shows his Gold Status card which is valid for 2 years. For most people, Gold statuses have to renew from year to year, and BA are normally very strict, miss the quota, and you lose your status. So some "freeloader" getting a guaranteed 2 years has upset quite a few business travellers.
There are more than a few PAs being told to draft angry emails to BA right now to complain about the inequity in the system right now.
The entire pecking order of the Flying Class system always amuses me. Those chubby little businessmen with their cards clutched in sweaty palms. Their rush for priority boarding is probably the fastest they ever move without the benefit of a golf cart. They'd probably complain if the plane crashed and they weren't the first to hit the ground. I have them all categorised from the power-suited alpha-women bosses to the teenage trustees to the vanilla escapees from the usual economy class doldrums (like moi).
I'll confess though, the lounges are nicer than schlepping with
hoi polloi in the free-range departure zoo, and the beds are better than the torture chairs they put in economy. I've sworn for a long time now that airlines put a lot of a time and effort into making economy worse just so first/business looks better. Come on, why else do you think you're waiting in a long, infinitely pointless queue staring at the 'fast track for first class ticket holders' sign? Ryanair? You don't think that was invented by a cartel of airline CEOs? They even gave it a comedy villain boss.
Many years ago I first got gold on USAir (it might have been AA) and the only palpable benefit of that was the cabin crew scowled slightly less. On US airlines it's always called something like Super Diplomat Envoy class, presumably because Americans don't have a class system and they're such exemplary diplomats.
Some places have a special lounge to keep proper First Class free from the off-the-peg salarymen that have scrambled into business class. Last year, travelling on a business ticket, I took the wrong corridor from the lounge reception to frantic cries of 'sir, sir, SIR!' I'll confess I ran and hid in the first class lounge toilet until it was safe for to come out and get cracking on the champagne. Eating from a buffet is so proletarian. They have table-service in First and everyone calls you 'sir.' It's a world where a Viscount isn't just a biscuit.
I would have been back on BA Gold but my boss did this year's tour of the far-east as I was on holiday, which is where I usually net all my tier points on business flights, so I languish in the netherlands of silver.