Originally Posted by
chrisl137
Lol... I work mostly on gov't contracts and that's sort of true in that it's allowed, but most of the time there's a lot that has to be done back at home that it makes more sense to fly home at the end of the work day at the travel end.
I think this changed, or some guideline changed so that you can use one or the other - they used to break mine down and subtract meals depending on when I left on the first day and arrived home on the last, but I'm pretty sure we're doing the 75% on partial days now, too. I think Darthbimmer's first post pretty much sums it up - if I arrive home at 2 am on friday after leaving remote work thursday, I don't get partial friday per diem. If I arrive home at 6 am I probably do (I try to avoid that since I'm west coast based and remote work tends to be east coast, so I'm not quite sure what they do).
I think for the most part civil servants do the same. Assuming I'm perhaps 3-4 hours from home, If I have a day of meetings that finish at 5pm, I'll fly home that night, if it means a late night arrival, so be it. I'm not going to burn taxpayer $ on an extra hotel night just to fly home during business hours the next day. I'm sure some people would stay over because it's allowed, but I'm guessing that most do not.
For west-to-east coast returns (I'm on the east coast) I prefer redeyes, it lets me have an afternoon at home to do errands or whatever rather than lose the whole day flying. At my agency, per diem would be the same at 75% on the home-arrival day, whether I take a redeye and get home at 1100 the next day, or spend that next day flying and get home at 1900.
As to your second point, I'm sure there are agency-specific tweaks on how they handle things.