MilesBuzz! - Fed Business travelers keeping FF miles

Congress now allows Federal Travelers on Official Business to earn, keep and use FF miles for personal use. I get upgrades on most of flights and that suites me just fine but now the pot is sweetened with being allowed to use the FF miles on personal trips. Sky Marshals will possibly rack up for a job that will be rough on a personal life!!! What are the thoughts on this??? And what about airlines allowing all of these fare classes to earn some of the "BONUS" miles often awarded?

What fare classes? I'm pretty sure that Sky Marshalls do not accure FF points.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Greeneyes:
Congress now allows Federal Travelers on Official Business to earn, keep and use FF miles for personal use. Sky Marshals will possibly rack up for a job that will be rough on a personal life!!! What are the thoughts on this??? </font>

I don't believe that Sky Marshals are flying on purchased tickets, so they wouldn't be eligible for mileage accrual.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Greeneyes:
I get upgrades on most of flights and that suites me just fine...</font>

no pun intended, i'm sure! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Please also see:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum109/HTML/002839.html

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Greeneyes:
Congress now allows Federal Travelers on Official Business to earn, keep and use FF miles for personal use. I get upgrades on most of flights and that suites me just fine but now the pot is sweetened with being allowed to use the FF miles on personal trips. Sky Marshals will possibly rack up for a job that will be rough on a personal life!!! What are the thoughts on this??? And what about airlines allowing all of these fare classes to earn some of the "BONUS" miles often awarded?</font>

The sky marshall job to me is a crappy one. You don't get a whole lot of money, you are on the road constantly and you're on call when you're not. You can't really have much of a personal life with it, and most of the time, all you will do is sit around and do nothing. And when you do something, most of the time, you will be criticized because you "overreacted" to something.

Ugggh. As far as I am concerned, especially since it costs me nothing, give them the miles. Let them use them. You have to give the people masochistic enough to take this job something.

My understanding is the airlines don't like the Sky Marshall program because they are forced to relinquish a certain number of revenue seats on each flight to accommodate them onboard. This would say to me that the airlines don't get paid by the Secret Service or which ever branch of the US government that runs this program. Thus, the flying Sky Marshalls do would not entitle the to FF miles. Then again, if you were a SM, I suspect the last thing you would want to do was to get on a plane to go somewhere!

As for other public servants getting to keep their miles, that's fine and about time. Treating public servants as second class citizens never cut it with me. Unless there is an inherent conflict of interest situation, they should be treated like the rest of us.