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My wife often wonders how the average traveler gets by.  She sees me on the phone with airlines for long periods of time during irregular operations or booking awards. She sees the difficulties that I face, and I do it a lot. She sees the mistakes that agents make. And the battles I wage, banging my head against a wall in between. (She’s a saint for putting up with it!) And she wonders, if I have such a hard time, how do ‘regular folks’ get by on their own? And of course it didn’t used to be that way… I don’t tend to romanticize travel agents.  In my experience, both before the rise of online bookings and after, most of them were terrible.  That rather mirrors my experience in most other industries, actually.  But good…

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The US Airways Holiday Shopping Promo ‘up to 250% bonus miles’ should be posting today. I’d imagine no later than 3pm in Tempe, Arizona. There are many, many of us waiting with baited breath for millions of miles to pour in. UPDATE: Miles have posted!! There are many happy mileage millionaires today…!

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Last week, 17 drivers were arrested or cited by police for picking up passengers at BWI airport without the required permit. At least three drivers, including Creecy, told The Capital they were handcuffed in front of longtime customers and kept in a police holding cell at the airport for eight hours overnight Tuesday. The arrests and citations were issued during an authority police initiative to “enforce the policies and regulations regarding the standards of transportation services providers are required to adhere,” said Cpl. Robert Thibodeau, an authority police spokesman. “Our job is to protect the customers who are using those services,” Thibodeau said. Operators claimed they didn’t even know the permits were still required. “My business has been around for 15 years,” Overmier said. “We used to have to have a permit to operate (at…

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