 In some cases, this was done in the offices of "specialist" travel agencies that had suddenly sprung up on both sides of the Atlantic to cash in on the new "cheap flights bonanza".These travel agents unscrupulously sold thousands of tickets to people falsely representing themselves to the aviation authorities in Britain, the US and Canada as members of an ever-greater variety of imaginary "affinity groups".As soon as this scam had come to the relevant authorities' attention, they began policing the departure areas of the main departure and arrival airports on both sides of the Atlantic with the aim of catching bogus "affinity group" members and preventing them from boarding their flights.