Polomarc

Did not know it would be so stressful do you have PA's and TA's who help out with the scheduling

Mart81

Speaking for myself I tend to know about 2~3 weeks in advance. Sometimes it can be a trip for next week. Travel under 7 days is frowned upon but acceptable at times

Land-of-Miles

I find that the PA's etc. have no real clue about travel so never trust anyone else to make my own travel arrangements when I travel for clients. I always arrange myself so that I have full control over the trip. Typically I also have to pay myself and reclaim so I like to have proper control of the trip too.

paulwuk

Most people in my area just say "I need to be in manilla on wednesday, can you book me".

I use matrix to find preferred flights, then copy/paste it in an email to my TA to book. Especially handy with multi-city and multi-carrier itineraries.

DomesticusTaxmius

Interestingly my company changed the policy last year.

We now no longer go by flight time but by distance traveled. So anything over 2,000 miles will qualify for J.

Personally, having done long haul in Y and J - the quality of my work is so much better when travelling J.

LondonElite

I've said it before, over the years. I think much of this comes down to your own sense of what is reasonable.

I run my own business (more accurately I am a joint owner of a fund) within a small boutique operation. My business travel is split between travel to grow our business (where our business picks up the costs) and travel for specific projects that we are working on (where our clients pick up the costs).

In both cases, I try to think about what is reasonable. Within Europe, nearly all of my ex-UK travel is on BA and I have no problems flying ET. My BA status gets me what I need otherwise, and I normally sleep on the sort flights anyway. Unless CE is cheaper than what is left in Y fares, I just can't justify paying for it. It doesn't really seem reasonable to me. Others may disagree, but £400 more (often) for a wider elbow room and getting off the plane first doesn't work for me.

On the other hand, if I'm flying overnight to DXB opn a Saturday, in order to be able to start working on Sunday morning in Dubai, I think that a CW seat is reasonable. I'm giving up my weekend, I need to sleep, and I'm there to work, not to lie on the beach sipping mojitos. In that case I think it is reasonable to charge my clients £3,000 or whatever.

I appreciate that bigger organisations, or those that have a lot of junior people travelling, need a framework that is clear, rather than allowing everyone's different view of reasonableness to get in the way. However, as others have said, many travel policies are just dumb from this point of view and should be thought through by people with more travel experience.

LondonElite

This reminds me of a weird travel 'policy' I was indirectly a part of about 11-12 years ago. I was doing some advisory work for a large bank. One of the requirements of the assignment was that all travel is booked through their travel desk. The person who booked my travel said that they had a special arrangement with BA whereby they got fully flex C tix in CE, but at a significantly reduced price.

When I took my first flight to TXL under this arrangement I looked at the paper receipt that was printed on ticket stock (remember that?). I noticed the price was something like £800. So much for significantly reduced price. Because I didn't want the high travel costs affecting our fee, I said that I thought the fares were too high, and that I would prefer to book myself into much cheaper seats. They insisted that travel was booked through their travel system. Fine.

I then decided to try something. I was coming back from CDG one afternoon and decided to check into my MUC flight the next day. Again, full J fare. I checked on ba.com and there were still a bunch of D fares, so I went to the ticket desk and asked if I could get a refund on the ticket and book a D fare instead. She changed it over, I still had the same seats. She then asked me if I would like a MCO for the difference, which was about £200.

This continued for the better part of the year, until the assignment was over. I'm not sure if the client ever found out, but we saved ourselves probably £8,000 this way. Before anyone starts with 'scamming the client' I should point out that we were paid net after travel costs, so we were really saving our own fee, and tix flexibility was not important for either me or the client. Not sure if this type of MCO refund is still possible, though I doubt it.

Land-of-Miles

If you book through a corporate travel desk the corporate will get the override rebate (which may be as much as 50% of fare paid where there isn't a specific route deal) so it is quite clear why they wanted you to book via their travel desk rather than do the same thing via your own travel arrangement and effectively bill the company for your rebates.

Deals like paying for I and getting D inventory etc. tend to be route specific and attach to negotiated net fare deals. These negotiated deals are pre rebate so if the volume trigger is reached as I understand it the end of year % rebate kicks back a further chunk of this travel cost.

The difficulty is that with more travel these days attaching to project rather than operational budgets the quoted fare looks high as the project typically doesn't get the rebate it flows back elsewhere.

irmster

well that went well. Just changed departments in the same company - and my new department has a Y only policy and refuses to accept my verbal agreement or in fact the company's own travel policy.

I've managed to get them to stump up for WT+ for a flight next week to DOH (as I told them I wouldn't go otherwise) but they won't budge on J. So my first non premium long hauls for 15 years. Oh well.

DaveyS

My company policy is that we have to fly Y on the most direct route - no exceptions (can possibly argue for WT+ if stepping off plane into meeting, but that's about it). As we're UK based this means typically LHR to wherever we're going, direct flight if possible unless connections are much cheaper. If we want to do anything else (upgrade, different routings, etc.) then we cover the costs ourselves. Even if it's cheaper to do ex-DUB or what-not in J, we still have to use the LHR-destination Y basic price as our starting point.

Dave Noble

This would be something I would take further if there is a department trying to flout company policy

Fitch

When I started at the current client, I was given the Travel Policy to read.

As expected, it was full of stern warnings about only ever choosing the cheapest possible ticket, including LCCs, explicit about not gaming the system for FF benefits, and insisted that all booking must be made via AmEx Travel "who will enforce this policy with no exceptions"...

Except that, when you actually call the AmEx booking line, you get through to a very helpful person sat in Brighton who will basically book whatever you want (within reason)...

So all my client-related travel so far has been on BA in semi-flex Economy, with a lovely CW trip to SFO coming up in a few weeks time

Policies and procedures are great, but only as effective as the humans operating them

dc2447

Am I missing something, this is just ignoring the policy

dc2447

There is no such thing as verbal policy

Fitch

@dc2447 it's certainly against the spirit of the policy but not necessarily against its letter.

To give an example, the first time I called them, I was fully prepared to be on a cheapo cheap U2 from LTN but the conversation went something like this:

"Hi I need to be in Glasgow on the following dates..."

"Certainly, no problem - which airport do you prefer to leave from ?"

"Oh well, LGW is usually best for me, LHR if not..."

"That's fine, I see from your profile you're a BAEC member - would you like me to search for BA flights first ?"

"Well, if that's allowed..."

"Not a problem, so let's see...... how about BAxxx out and BAyyy back ?"

"Perfect - couldn't be more convenient !"

"Great, and we always include luggage in the ticket, so you'll be able to choose your seat for free "

"Wonderful, thanks !"

"OK that's all done for you - there wasn't much difference in price so I've also booked you into semi-flexible Economy so you'll be earning a few more miles as well..."

"Awesome"

The above is pretty much exactly the conversation I've had every time I've called them. I don't know whether the client is getting exactly what they want from the TA contract but employee/contractor customer service gets a 10/10 from me