@Jaffa: divide et impera!

1) Maemo.org had to fix karma issue: this task is completed
2) Maemo council can start approving people, looking who requested it and ordering them with any criteria you want to use (karma, talk proposed ecc....)

The more you wait, the more the flight will cost.

If you or Nokia decide to use an agency to book flight, they'll charge you additonal money and is it possible they cannot book flight with low-cost companies.

So my suggestion is: just approve sponsorship requests and let the approved people to book the flight them selves. You'll save a lot of money to use for other people.

Divide the approvation queue in some trunks so you can shape it as you want.