Received this Email regarding the abuse of Official Government Travel Miles being used for Personal Travel. It should be considered for a better understanding of what is going on. Your future Upgrades and Awards will be affected by this.
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Govt. travel is funded by the US Taxpayers. FreqFlyer Miles should be used only for authorized Govt travel. If these Govt. FF miles are now allowed to be used for PERSONAL travel, then the US taxpayer is paying to upgrade Govt employees.

The potential for abuse of excessive travel could be authorized by the Govt upper management bureaucrats to get these FF miles, which would eventually be competing with every one else on their business or personal travel.

Do not allow Federal employees to use Miles to fly First class on personal or leisure flights at the expense of the US taxpayer.

There are MANY Govt employees flying everyday and will compete with the Taxpayer, who is paying his own way. There will be a reduction of upgrades and award seats with the FF.

[This message has been edited by ROADRUNNER (edited 08-02-2001).]

Those dirty government employees, all overpaid and underworked. Make them all fly coach so that they won't compete with real people who deserve to fly first with their miles. Come on, we all know that nobody gets rich on a government salary. If you have ever worked for the government you know that the vast majority of government workers are under paid and under appreciated by people exactly like you. The least you could do is let them use a few crummy frequent flier miles so that they can fly first class every now and then. Costs the taxpayer nothing to let them keep the miles and the improvement in morale is huge.

Actually, back in the days when I was in the military our fares did not accrue frequent flier miles. Nothing like ignorance to breed flames.

Aw why not add some fuel here...nowadays most GSA contract carrier fares are Y class, sometimes M class, albeit at sometimes ridiculously low cost, and thereby trump discount fares for upgrade waitlists. That's what I object to.

And they do accrue FF miles. While there are people at all levels who will generate an official travel requirement to earn miles, it is a big workforce and there are always some bad in the huge number of good. Uncle Sam needs to adjust this old policy.

As an ex-government employee (6 years with the US Dept. of Justice), I have a couple of perspectives on this. First, the employees working for the government certainly do not get well compensated. When I joined the Justice Dept. as a junior prosecutor (GS-11), I was paid about half of what I was offered to work at several major law firms (although, undoubtedly, I would have been working longer hours there, but not twice as long). Thus, I agree that government salaries do not match private enterprise.

Government employees on travel spend just as much time away from their families as people in private business do (which, to me, has always been the main justification for allowing employees on travel to keep the miles).

However, the government is simply ridiculous with its travel purchasing. If it wanted to avoid the problem of employees using the miles for private use, it could just require the airlines to issue a class of tickets which do not accrue FF miles. THAT'S WHAT COMPUTERS ARE FOR!! The airlines' computers could clearly distinguish the class of ticket, and not allow the accrual of FF miles. The government could then demand lower ticket prices through the money that would be saved on no FF benefits for those tickets. (Sure, there would be the occasional person who would get some miles when tickets were reissued incorrectly because of a cancelled flight or something, but you can't make a policy which will catch 100% of the possible errors that airlines can make).

That being said, I support government employees being able to keep their miles and use them for personal use.

Djlawman

I am in the military NOW, and I know for a fact that all govenrment fares are elegible for frequent flier miles, you just can't use them for personal travel. I could say a few choice things about being accused of ignorance in light of that post, but I'll pass.
Just to illustrate my point let me tell you about a friend who is one of those supposedly competing for your seats. This member of a Coast Guard training team has been in the Coast Guard for 11 years, is an E-6, and has a college degree. His job consists of training members of Coast Guard units around the country on proper search and rescue techniques. It consists of six to eight 2 week trips to Coast Guard ships around the country. He usually leaves his family on Sunday morning and flys all day. Upon arrival at the ship he will be working on, he is assigned a bunk in a small room with between 25 and 40 other strangers. If he is lucky he'll get a "free upgrade" to a top bunk away from the door so he doesn't have to wake up all night when his roomates come back and forth from watch. He will work 12 hour days for the entire 2 weeks, including Saturday. On Sunday he gets the day off, but he can't watch the news on TV, read a newspaper, or talk to his family because he is in the middle of the ocean. Oh, and the wine they serve there is even worse then UA, it's grape flavored cool-aid. At the end of the two weeks he gets to fly home and get back late Friday night or Saturday, then he comes in for a regular work week the next Monday. How much extra money does he get for this trip? Well he will get per diem to cover his food and expenses for the two travel days, which will amount to about $50.00 total. While he is on the ship his food and lodging is provided, so he gets nothing extra. His annual salary is a whopping $26,000 a year. Why does he continue to do this? Its so that the rest of the Coast Guard will be prepared to go find and rescue you when you are out there in trouble on the water. These are the kind of people who are most affected by the ban on personal use of miles, do you think it would be such a bad thing if we let this guy use some of the miles he accumulated (at no cost to the taxpayer since he had to fly anyway) to take a vacation with his family to make up for the almost 3 months that his job kept him not only away from his family, but completely cut off from them?
The vast majority of govt. travel is done by poeple like this, not the mythical "Govt. upper management bureaucrats" In fact, most high level govt workers have their own aircraft dedicated to VIP transport and never even enter the commercial air system. So don't take your dislike of government out on those of us who are out in the trenches every day doing a job that actually matters just to ensure you have a complete monopoly on upgrades. A little selfish, don't you think?

Personal deprivation aside, to let employees (government or private enterprise) keep the miles from flying on their employer's expense is not a right. It's a perk.

For a company, it means the travel department can't use the miles to reduce their overall cost of operations. It means the same for government departments. Every personal trip or upgrade you, as an employee, receive is money out of the employer's pockets.

So as a government employee, you don't own those miles directly except as part of the taxpayers of America. It's up to us, collectively as a countyr, to decide whether to grant an additional perk to government employees.

I have no problem with gov't employess keeping the miles and do feel that perhaps they do deserve a little something. My only concern is the extent that people go to to get those miles. How many travelers spend an extra $500 to travel their choise airline. I am sure that there are many on this board who are guilty of paying a higher fare to travel on their preferred carrier. It is conceivable to me that for example a person is based in nyc and makes frequent trips to chicago. On this route UA happens to give a substantial gov't discount, so the traveller racks up UA miles. Then when the traveller has to go ny-la, they find out that AA has gov't contract rate, but they flu UA anyways and pay the higher fare. If you claim that AA times were inconvenient, I doubt anyone will look into it.

I was in the Canadian military for many years and travelled considerably on commercial airlines. As part of my conditions of service, I was not allowed to accumulate FF points in any program. Not collecting points became part of my job description. I did however regret those lost points ..especially those years when I would have been top tier.

I don't know about other parts of the govt, but in the military, all official travel has to be booked through the military travel office. They are required to book on contract fares, regardless of cost (see another thread for the cost benefit of that). This means it is impossible for an individual to pay a higher fare to get a favorable airline. If you did manage to circumvent that, the travel claim process also checks to ensure you used the contract fare. You only get reimbursed to the contract rate, so you'll be paying the rest out of your own pocket. As to using the miles for govt travel, do you really think that is reasonable? Do you expect the govt to hire the hundreds of extra agents it would take to find reward seat availability to match required flights? You've tried to find a reward flight yourself so you know how difficult it is, now imagine trying to do it with hundreds of people. Wouldn't setting up and running such a system cost more then the money saved by using the miles? The system in place now works like some advocate, employees give their miles to the govt. The fact is, however, that none of them get used by the govt because it is impractical. So in fact the tax dollars are being wasted now because the govt gets neither the free flights nor the increase in employeee morale that comes from the ocassional free flight.

A few thoughts:

1. Yes, being a government employee can be tough; however, despite relatively low pay, the benefits are usually pretty good, civil service exams are not the hardest things in the world to take (been there, done that), and it takes an act of God for you to be fired. Most importantly, NO ONE FORCES YOU TO WORK FOR THE GOVERNMENT. Like all jobs, people should know what they are getting when they are hired. So save the "whine" for after dinner.

2. The above being said (waiting for hate mail), why not let the government employees keep the accrued miles? Most of our employers let us keep them. Wouldn't my car be a little cheaper if GM employees used accrued FF miles to travel on business? Wouldn't my computer be cheaper if H-P did the same thing? Most of us would have a fit if our employeers did that to us. Why should the goverment do it to them? Let them keep and use the miles, AS LONG AS it does not increase the cost of the trips people have to take on business.

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What do you mean I can't charge my heart bypass to my Visa? I need the MILES!!!

CG:

This may be off-topic; but as an American citizen please pass along my thanks and gratitude to yourself and your friend who is in the Coast Guard who every day protect us and are willing to risk your lives. I for one appreciate what all of you in the military do for our country.

A good point that one or more people have brought up is the infeasibility of managing all these frequent flyer miles for government use. You'd have to hire people to manage the frequent flyer miles, and it might turn out that the cost of sorting through them for "official use" isn't worth the cost of hiring the person to do the sorting.

I have a friend who works for a company (not the government directly) that uses government-established per diem rates as their guidelines for what employees should spend for food and lodging in a certain city. They used to require that employees collect all their receipts, including meals, and submit an expense report at the end of the trip. Then accounting would go over things, double-check, do whatever paperwork they needed to do, etc.

Well, when they looked into it, this was costing them a fair amount of money. By requiring that the employee deal with so many different receipt, and itemize down to the penny ("here's the 7-11 receipt for the 72 cents I spent on a Coke, and..."), the time to prepare an expense report was astronomical, relatively speaking. And then accounting had to put in just as much time.

What they ended up doing was going to a system where employees didn't have to itemize lodging or food costs unless it went over the published per diem rate -- and then they had to justify why this was, maybe get approval, etc. But if they were at or under per diem, they just said so and they got reimbursed the full per diem amount. If they were 10 bucks under per night on their lodging, good for them. They earned an extra 10 bucks that day.

In the end, it's saving his company money since people were paying reasonably close to per diem anyway. Expense reports can be done in 10 minutes, instead of an hour. Accounting isn't trying to cross-reference everything. You save the labor hours at whatever overhead rate the company has. And usually employees net a few extra bucks per day because they come in slightly under per diem. It's a win-win situation.

Now, granted, there are employees who try to make a profit on this. My friend stays at a friend's house whenever he goes to one particular city, and nets the whole hotel per diem for his own personal income. But, eh, so what? Before he stayed at per diem hotels, it's the same cost to the company, he's inconveniencing himself (and his friend) to make 100 bucks a night, which is worth it to him. Everybody's happy.

Anyway, this has kind of strayed off topic. Just reaffirming that sometimes the cost of dealing with things simply isn't worth it, and letting employees (even government employees!) have an extra perk is actually a win-win situation. Besides, much as it might make some people cringe to think about it, when you're talking about hundreds of millions or more dollars in Division X or Project Y, the cost of a $800 plane ticket is down there in the noise.

CG

Beautifully said!

jer

Oh, where to start. As a prior USAF pilot and ten year lazy, overpaid, rotund government slob; I offer the following Mr./Ms. Roadrunner:

1-Life in the military was very easy and the food was delicious. We were paid at least three times what the airline pilots received, and those extended tours of duty to protect fine folks such as yourself were no hardship at all.

2-My current gig entails 140-150 nights on the road per year; or roughly three weeks out of every month (I do get to fly home on the weekends). As with my military time, I am again paid at least three times what my open market counterparts receive. The best part is that all we really do is sit around all day talking about our generous benefits package (there is a modicum of truth to that), smoke cigarettes, order out for lunch since we are too lazy and ignorant to drive, drink coffee, etc. Oh, around 4 P.M. or so one of us will amble over and fetch a broom. Then we will sit and argue over who has to sweep up before we head out at 4:15 P.M. to avoid traffic.

3-Fact of the matter is that I have squirreled up a massive amount of frequent flyer miles, primarily since I fly on Y class tickets and get comped to FC virtually all of the time, anyway. With the pending legislation to allow us gubment employees (notice that I did not write workers) keep our miles; we will be flying FC to Europe this summer and staying in awesome hotels for free. And we will be laughing at you, Roadrunner! Laughing! Fetch your nine, son! Bust a cap in my porky gubment rear! Write your Congressman!

Oh wait, I forget. He will be out flying FC somewhere too. Just to build up miles at your expense. Oh, man. Roadrunner. You need to do something about this.