The tricky part is that it's not the company I contract with that does the flights/reimbursement. The end users "provide flights." Some end users will do a reimbursement if asked but typically I'm asked what airline and flight I want, I send it up the pipeline, then get an email from the end user with the record locator, then go in and add my FF# and change to better seats. I'm thinking that maybe no one wants to create the expectation that people at my level can easily buy their own ticket and wait for reimbursement,although in this case, as you point out, it could be a carrot for the end user. OTOH, the end users are usually buying 100+ tickets at a time so maybe I'm unrealistic for thinking that saving a few hundred dollars matters at all.