At my wife's company (small wholly owned subsidiary of very large multi-national company) there is a policy - any fare (booked thru corporate travel portal provided by AMEX) which is more than $100 of the cheapest available - even for international flight - requires approval.

This obviously generates quite weird results. An example - a round trip from Singapore to US: cheapest flights are on Air China/China Eastern and other Chinese carriers in US $780-$900 range with two connections inside China and 12-14h between connections with total travel time of 38h and more.

Well, if one selects one connection, then there are better options available, but the most logical ones are outside the policy.

Does your company has similar flight booking policy and how do you overcome this?