There is actually method to their madness. The government makes large contracts with the airlines for city-pair rates. These rates are privately negotiated and have no relation to the published rates you may find. The rates are the same every day of the year, are fully changeable and refundable, and can be used only by govt employees under orders. The object of the government is to get the best overall cost from the airlines for their entire travel budget, i.e. we have to move 900,000 people around the U.S. this year, what is the total cost going to be. In order to acomplish this, they contract with the airlines who bid with the understanding that all official travel will be done using these rates. The end result is that some city pairs have very low rates (for example any rate to Pensacola, FL which is a training command with a lot of transient personnel), and other cities have very high rates. Even though the government may pay more then the currently published fare (although this usually isn't the case if you look at a compareable fully refundable ticket) for a given ticket, they more then make up for it by paying much less then any published fare to those cities that receive the most government travelers. Why don't they cheat and use the published fares when they are lower? If they did, the airlines would cancel their contracts and not give them the good deals on the most traveled routes, thus increasing the total cost to the govt for travel. I know you like to think of all government employees as being idiots, but there are a few of us that are spending your taxpayer dollars wisely even if you don't know it.