Originally Posted by
Often1
The decision to purchase a more expensive fare than necessary in order to provide a personal benefit to an employee is exactly the sort of "waste, fraud & abuse" which is investigated by agency Inspectors General.
Example of killing the goose which laid the golden egg. Sooner or later --- and it only takes one Congressional hearing about feds flying F --- GSA will simply ban feds from accepting F or UA will pull the upgradeability of YCA fares so as not to get into a fight.
Except that a YCA fare isn't purchased in order to give the traveler a personal benefit. It's purchased when the traveler needs flexibility. It sounds great on paper that feds should travel on penalty fares - until 2 or 3 schedule changes eat up the savings realized in buying the cheaper fare.
Most of the travel taken by our staff is short fuse - less than 72 hours notice. For them, there is almost never a CA fare available. I had a staff member stuck in Atlanta last week. The only reason he was able to get out after spending 24 extra hours than expected was because he had a refundable YCA fare, and was able to change from UA to DL and get out earlier than he would have otherwise been able to.