Originally Posted by
Laylla
I fly the CHS-IAD route frequently, and United used to have several flights a day. Now there is only 2 per day. This decrease in the routing happened at the first of the year, when the sequester was supposed to happen. Most of this route is travelled by SPAWAR employees and the government employees that work on the SPAWAR contracts. SPAWAR has all but quit traveling over the sequester debaucle and this has of course continued since the delay to March 1.
This.
I'm a DoD contractor, and my program (an Army program) implemented severe travel restrictions in late January in response to
guidance from the Secretary and Chief of Staff of the Army. At that time I had to cancel two (nonrefundable) tickets for upcoming trips, one of them set to begin in three days' time.
Excerpt:
"Curtail temporary duties and professional training that are not mission-critical, such as attendance at or hosting of conferences, staff assistance visits and training seminars. Exceptions may be made for mission-critical activities, including those required to maintain profession licensure or equivalent certifications, and preparation for assumption of command."
"Temporary duties" means "travel." It's tough for a geographically dispersed R&D program like ours, where travel to our sites ("staff assistance visits") is such an important part of our operation.
OSD,
Navy, and
Air Force have released similar guidance.
On the bright side for you, there are probably significantly fewer DoD travelers competing for upgrades these days.