transborder I must come to the defense of "some bonehead within our CFO and/or purchasing organization". As a finance guy who supports the purchasing organization of a large (100k employees) company, I find a common mistake in perception of the people with regard to airline tickets. What you see is not always what you get in this world. We have a deal negotiated with our preferred airline that if we but full fare tickets and fulfull our commitment to seats filled on various routes we will get a sizeable rebate back from the airline. Last year the rebate was in the millions of dollars. People would wonder why they had to book on the preferred carrier when they perceived the cost to be cheaper elsewhere when in reality after the rebate was factored in the preferred carrier was much cheaper. The problem was the travel department continues to charge the travelers the full cost of the tickets and keeps the rebate in their cost center.

Sorry for being off topic but I cannot stand by and watch the good name of Finance people be slandered!