kelvinj

I am about to accept a position with the Federal Government and will travel frequently. How does City Pairs work, as it concerns sticking with Delta exclusively. Is there any way to do this, or are employees forced to take certain airlines to certain destinations?

rwoman

For agreed GSA City Pairs, it changes each fiscal year beginning Oct. 1st. There is never a guarantee the carrier serving a route will be the same. Further, the carrier on a city pair might not be the carrier providing direct service.

For example, I've seen ATL-LON be on both DL and AA. While DL flies direct they have not always had the City Pair in the past 10 years. At times AA had it, requiring a connection at an AA hub or an AA codeshare on the BA-operated flight.

Very rarely have I seen those doing gov't travel bookings deviate from city pairs unless it was last minute travel.

realjd

You're on full Y fares though, right? That should help the upgrade situation quite a bit.

rwoman

Not always. While I've often seen Y(CA) fares, I've seen other lower fare buckets booked for gov't travel as well. This includes M, K, H, T, and V.

orca15

The big picture is that, unless you travel the same route every trip, expect to lose all FF status. I had many years of 10K miles on four or five different carriers.

Even if you fly the same route, the carrier can change each fiscal year.

njcommodore

That's not quite true, I know many gov travelers that are able to steer travel to a particular carrier while still following the rules. Part of that will depend on the agency's requirements to use the lowest available fare or gov fare.

BobH

City pairs are specific negotiated rates with specific carriers for specific routes and you have no choice as to which carrier you will be flying with.... but if you live in an area that's a major hub.... (for example in the DTW area, Delta has some 80% of the flights)

At one time Federal employees weren't even entitled to retain the frequent flyer points they earned, but that was changed a long time ago.

Another thing to consider is 'club' membership and whether you'll be even able to get to the club if you're on another carrier, let alone be allowed in because you may have to have a ticket for that day.

Using DTW as an example, the Sky Clubs are in the south terminal, but if you're on another airline, your flight will leave from the north terminal.

My recommendation is to sign up for frequent flyer points with each airline that you fly --- same, of course, applies to hotels.

Bob H

qukslvr619

Google GSA City Pairs FY2015. It should bring up an excel spreadsheet of all ORG/DES City Pairs.

Historically, it seemed like most airlines bid on their hub routes. What I've seen in the past two years however indicates differently. And since the govt FY begins in OCT, if you are exclusively flying one carrier/one route its possible that it can switch before the end of the year. SANJAX used to be UA, then it swapped to WN which threw end of year earning for a loop but was able to squeeze by.

With respect to choosing carrier, it used to be that as long as the fare matched the contract carrier, you could fly carrier of choice. Now its pretty restrictive and requires approval, that is unless the contract carrier is not available. Thankfully, WN city pairs typically don't have great availability and if you end up last minute booking, it tends to end up on someone else.

FY 12 all flying was UA, FY13 no travel due to budget cuts, FY14 was the first time I've had to follow new rules so I did UA, DL, US, AA, WN....which is not great if your trying to maximize status/miles. Thankfully squeezed by as UA Gold, and DL Silver....would have liked to have done it all on DL if I could have.

MSPeconomist

For some city pairs, the contract carrier can be a LCC even when one of the legacy airlines offers nonstop frequent service on the route. [I once checked MSP-SFO and was shocked to discover that not only was the government contract carrier not NW/DL, it wasn't UA or AA either.]

In the days of paper tickets, you could often take the flight coupon to your carrier of choice and ask to take their flight instead; usually they were very willing to accept the government fare. Now the carrier owning the electronic ticket must release it and they won't except in special circumstances such as rebooking you during IROPs.

Alpha Golf

The contract choices sometimes seem wacky. But from a public point of view it works really well -- the fares are mostly really low.

As said the basic fare is always booked in Y, so good for upgrading, but sometimes there's a discount one as well.

You're generally required to take the contract unless there's a lower publicly available fare, though some agencies don't follow the rules too strictly.

A lot of people manage to retain status. Depending where you are, often the big local airline has a lot of contracts, because they get benefits for offering non-stop.

But when they switch contract on your prime route it does, seriously, suck.

hazelrah

I believe use of the contract city pairs has always been mandated. By definition (Federal Travel Regulations (FTR))use of the contract city pairs is in the best interest of the government. When the government puts its enormous buying power into negotiated rates it can get some great pricing. Government tickets are changeable and refundable with no fee.

That said there are some pretty common sense exceptions. If a YCA fare timing can't accomplish the mission, or if its use incurs more cost (such as an overnight accommodation) then an alternate carrier can be used.

Also, and as you say, the FTR include an out for use of a cheaper fare/alternate carrier than the city-pairs, as long as it is publicly available.

Heads of Agencies and Departments , etc. can impose more restrictions.

Further , Rail travel , as long as it is economical and supports the mission is preferred and requires no justification.

MSPeconomist

What happens if someone books tickets far in advance (although SOP would mean that the government doesn't purchase the tickets until very close to departure) and then the government contract carrier changes? Would you be able to continue using the previous airline, for example through the end of the year to (re)qualify for status, and then perhaps do a status match to the new government carrier for your route?

rob0225

The office I work in, they must take the least expensive flight. We fly ATL-DTW quite a bit with both of them being DL hubs but are often put on SouthWest because it is the lowest cost airline for that route.

As others have mentioned it will depend on your office and how strict they are on taking the lowest cost option.

hazelrah

Southwest won the 2015 city pair award for ATL-DTW.

Often1

There is tremendous variance in how different agencies and within agencies, decision units, interpret various provisions. Certainly it is fine to be tougher and more restrictive than required.

This is especially true for fare basis. Far from all government travel is booked in Y(CA) and there is growing pressure based on budget constraints for agencies to mandate the use of more restrictive fare bases which are not flexible.

It is worth remembering that most government appointments are probationary for some period of time. I would stick far within the rules until you fully understand the rules and how your particular decision unit handles them.