TUE JUN 14 05

		FlyerTalk. Why on earth would Larry Kellner, the ceo of Continental Airlines have dinner with a total stranger who posts as "Cigarman" on FlyerTalk.com, a message board populated by travel enthusiasts? "Well, one Sunday at about 1 a.m., I e-mailed him," says Cigarman, whose real name is Dean Burri, as reported by Susan Stellin in The New York Times. Cigarman, smart smoker that he is, had figured out Larry's email address and had a thing or two to tell him about Continental. Wouldn't you know it -- Larry e-mailed him back within minutes: "Turns out we're both Type A personalities and we both e-mail late at night," Cigarman says. That e-mail exchange led to "occasional dinners" and eventually to a bet between the Cigarman and the Ceo. "Larry and I were having a disagreement about the power of a site like FlyerTalk ... I was telling him that I think it's very important that travel companies watch these sites, for the good and the bad, because rumors get blown out of proportion. He said there's not more than 60 people on FlyerTalk, flyertalk.com, who fly Continental on a regular basis. I told him he was crazy, so a wager ensued." The bet was that if more than 60 FlyerTalk members paid their own way to Houston, Larry would buy them dinner, give them a special airport tour and answer their questions. Suprise-surprise: A total of 274 Continental loyalists showed up ... and, according to Cigarman, the "give-and-take" was "like Oprah." Take that, JetBlue. An interesting turn of events indeed, especially when you consider that Continental generally keeps a certain distance from sites like FlyerTalk: "When we see something that's factually incorrect, we'll work with the moderator, but we don't like to put our own posts on there," says Mark Bergsrud, Continental's marketing veep. Taking a slightly more proactive approach, a Flyertalk regular known as Starwood Lurker spends up to eight hours a day monitoring and sometimes subtly posting on behalf of Starwood Hotels. FlyerTalk's founder, Randy Petersen, also editor of InsideFlyer, insideflyer.com, magazine says he's surprised by all the airline involvement: "I was almost taken aback at how well Continental embraced that event," he says, "the biggest guys in the company rubbing elbows with some mileage fanatics." Tim Manners, editor