Over the past 15 years I've worked only at small companies-- the largest with just over 300 employees WW. All had written travel policies allowing only coach travel regardless of job title or length of trip. At one of those companies, though, there seemed to be an unwritten rule that SVPs and above could choose business class flights. They'd also book five-star hotels on many trips. That was a company where there was enough of a cult of personality that I presume the people in finance and accounting decided it simply wasn't worth their jobs to tell execs their actions were out of policy.