Originally Posted by acf573
Well, I guess the question is, how does AA account for those costs? If a director books an F ticket, does AA write it down as $15k? Or do they book it as actual cost of transportation (fuel, labor, depreciation, food, alcohol)? If it's the latter, the $420 per RT figure makes more sense.
My
guess (which I am not suggesting is correct) is that the directors have to report the retail value of the free tickets as taxable compensation and that is the basis for the $61,000. I doubt very seriously that a director of AA and/or his family had the time/inclination to basically fly around the world continuously during a 12 month period.
Originally Posted by acf573
Regarding Morgensen, she's sort of the Grand Dame of the NYT business page these days. I think she carved out a large reputation for herself reporting the numerous business scandals of the late 90's and early 00's so is given carte blanche to do whatever she wants. And to be fair, she did ask AA to provide more reasonable estimates on the cost of this program and they refused to do so.
Interesting, I mistakenly assumed that she was a travel writer playing business journalist for the day. I really got the impression reading her story that this was an op-ed piece masquerading as an article, with the author having a pre-conceived opinion that needed some "facts" to be thrown is as filler/supporting justification.