LaserSailor

In short because drones who work to make Fortune 500 executives rich only represent 10% of the working population. Those " standard travel policies " are no such thing for the rest of us, for good reason.

realjd

And what exactly does the other supposed 90% of the workforce do for a living if they're not working for a company yet somehow are allowed to and can afford to fly J everywhere?

Bonehead

I take it that DL has no equivalent to United's "Global Services" status, which is invitation only and based on spend (or corporate contract, i.e.spend). Those cats rarely travel in coach domestically, even on el cheapo tickets. One exception is when a bunch of us peons buy -UP fares and fill up the front cabin (happens a lot on DEN-PIT, for example). My heart bleeds when I see one of those poor GS guys head back to Y.

GRALISTAIR

Yes they do - Delta HVC 360

dickey1331

I don't know how other Fed workers do it but in the military you call SATO and they are the ones who book everything for you. Only thing you can really do is request a certain airline.

Detroiter

My company's policy was (not saying what it is now):

Within U.S., to/from Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, within Europe, lowest coach fare (with $40 tolerance to get a better flight time, and allowed to take non-stops even if not cheapest rather than being pushed onto connections)

To/from Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, South Pacific, business class

No exceptions, policy was enforced by American Express software.

Of course, Group VPs and above could commandeer the fleet of bizjets, and the company ran its own flights on popular routes using Convair propjets and Fokker F70s configured in business-class seating (2-2 with ample pitch on the Fokker). I flew a Fokker DTW-HII-SNA once, and it was pretty sweet!

yohanson

I work for a Fortune 100 company and our travel policy allows business class on flights over 8 hours. Otherwise, we are to buy the cheapest coach with about a $100 cushion (flights less than $100 more than the cheapest show up as "Green" in Concur) unless it is a connection that is less than $200 more or if it adds more than 2 hours to the trip. If it is the latter, the flight will show up in "Yellow" in Concur and both my boss and I get a nasty email about reining in travel costs but nothing else ever happens. I booked a flight to OMA earlier this year that was over $300 (more than double the cost) more than a connection. I replied back to the email, to my boss, as to why I booked it and he never responded to it nor has he ever mentioned it.

As far as buying refundable tickets, we are supposed to still follow the above rules and eat the fee if we have to cancel or change a flight. The people that set our policy feel it's cheaper in the long run to always buy the cheaper fares. BTW, all of my trips are billed to projects with the rare exception of traveling for training every couple of years.

Bonehead

Do they get automatically upgraded in most cases on domestic flights?

sethb

[QUOTE=VegasJosh;25274850I can debate this as that traveler on mirco hops fills a seat on a plane thus removing inventory from the system, with dynamic pricing this then can force the remaining seats to become more expensive. There is no way to know exactly how much this ripple effect will increase profits or revenue. When I was in the hotel business we used this pricing structure and even though some companys book a ton of rooms at 159 and would not be looked at as HVC the nights they took 100 rooms we were able to sell the other 100 at 359 due to lack of inventory and high demand thus making them very valuable.[/QUOTE]

If the company weren't there and you'd just set the price at $359, you'd still have sold at least 100 rooms (because you did) and maybe more because some of those $159 people might have been desperate enough to pay $359, and (based on your implication there were 200 rooms) there might have been others who wanted to pay $359 but were shut out. So the value of the company is in filling the rooms that would have gone empty given the $359 price, not creating the $359 price.

GRALISTAIR

Not a clue sorry

LaserSailor

The other 90% of the workforce works for companies that take better care of their employees, in general. People who quote big company travel policies are badly out of touch with how we compete with the most valuable thing in the business, good employees. I have a 6 foot 10 engineer who never flies in Coach, ever. I stole him from a company where a pinhead in accounting wouldn't change a travel rule for TPAC travel.

The real travesty in these rules is they get waived for the c- suite and EvPs whose business travel is the least productive and least substantial. The people bringing home the cash every week get the lowest fare grind. Absolutely insane.

jallred6

Ugh -- my firm (a Big 4 consultancy) lets me book J (or F if no J) on flights over three hours. Who are these silly employers who stick their people in steerage where they can't open a laptop to do work, and are uncomfortable to boot?

krlcomm

+100 ^

VegasJosh

does not really work like that you can seller higher rates as inventory decreases for a variety of reasons.

if you would like to read the how's where's and why's this is a article
http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4045046.html

if this were not true why do hotels and airlines adjust prices at all why not just have 1 price for y and one for j?

LaserSailor

Owwww. My policy is 4 hours. I'm going to have to up my game.