This is a little off-topic, but...

The OH's company has recently been bought out by a large American outfit that apparently has an army of auditors in Ireland who scrutinise every expense report and travel claim to ensure that it's "within policy". Previously we were able to do things like look for sale fares in WT/WT+ and upgrade with miles, do ex-EU fares in Club and pay the difference, and so forth. Apparently all those loopholes are out the window now, and they are completely inflexible about it.

He ends up going back to the west coast probably 3-4 times a year, and occasionally to the east coast (1-2x a year), so it's not a lot, and we just budgeted for it and made it happen. But apparently this is just not an option now.

There is some kind of programme that allows club travel on 10-hour-plus flights, but it requires 100k miles per year of travel. Almost impossible to do in an EMEA role (which he is), even though he travels 3-4 days a week across Europe. (Clearly designed for coast-to-coast US travellers.)

Apparently as he's spoken with other mid-level execs at the company, the other way to get a bit of leeway is to get a doctor's note that says it is medically problematic to be in confined space over long periods of time, and therefore you need to travel in Club. I found this to be a bit suspect, but we're looking into it further. Is anyone else familiar with this rather odd technique? Interestingly it's not far out on a limb for him as he's 2m (6'7") tall and has had to see an orthopaedic recently about ongoing knee issues, so...

So anyone else heard of this?