adrianlondon

Being a Brit, it's easy to understand that the salary bump is a good one. It's obvious that the base salary is well into the 40% tax step, so a £2,000 net increase to cover the Y travel is close to £3,000 gross.

If the travel was a couple of times a year, sure, Y is fine. But once a month means a ton of jetlag and probably weekend flying. The money's no good when most of your off/family time is spent in airports or asleep! So for me, unless the job was amazing, it'd be easy to make my decision.

Flights are a business expense, so you've just been offered close to £3k to upgrade each monthly flight. Assuming (a) you're allowed to upgrade and (b) the tickets bought are upgradable then I'd take the job. You'll be swimming in status, and all your flights will be in J. However, if the tickets bought are not upgradeable or the company insists you sit in Y regardless, then for monthly LH flights I'd turn the job down.

This ignores any other travel policy limits such as only cheapo hotels etc.

corporate-wage-slave

Well, it could also be the tape measure of either Mr. Marks or Mr. Spencer?

[Though apparently they have been increasing the sizes of their clothes on the sly, to prevent upsetting their customers, kind of the opposite to BA I suppose].

Raffles

squawk

There is a wealth of interesting perspectives in this thread, but I'll throw a couple of other things I've not seen mentioned.

The first is those on this forum are often those who have reached a certain level of seniority in their careers. They may have valuable skills and expertise that put them in a strong position in terms of negotiating benefits, and might have experience of conducting such negotiations. Importantly, many of us here have the wherewithal to walk away from an offer that is sufficiently unattractive, confident of finding something else. I am not sure of the OP's circumstances, and the offer of £24k per month extra is a considerable amount, so perhaps he/she is in this position - but this is not a given. For a relatively junior applicant to be too picky may not always be so easy.

The second is that it depends on the sector, which also links to something which has been mentioned here before in terms of public perception: someone working for an NGO, the government, or a university may find themselves with different restrictions, including (potentially) being unable to upgrade themselves even if they can afford it, there are no ticketing restrictions, and there is availability. The OP has said this is a US company, so it doesn't perhaps apply here, but this may factor into other people's considerations.

The long and short of it is that one would have to weigh up very carefully the situation one is in, and the benefits on offer: it may not be so easy to walk away.

bagold

An industry term called "Vanity Sizing". All brands do that so in reality you could be a 38 and they call it a 36.

squawk

​​​​​Now there's an idea if the current work becomes too tedious…

Jimmie76

I would have done so when I was younger but I'd think twice now.

irmster

I negotiated J for all long haul flights when I joined my present company. However, it was a verbal discussion and I never had it put in writing. I was then moved departments and the new department insisted on all Y. I refused to fly Y but accepted PE. Needless to say, I rarely get asked to fly long haul now. (I enjoy the job otherwise so have not caused too much of a fuss).

BA6948

schrodingerdog

My company (An American multinational chemical manufacturer) has a J-only policy for middle-to-big fishes, and I know of some technical guys that have to travel a lot (2-3 weeks per month) that managed to get the same policy. Even in the corporate travel policy there is a paragraph stating that the standard policy (<5h Y, >5h J) is open to exceptions if you can justify the reasons.

Infinite Possibilities

My company has a flexible travel policy, with the provision that we must do what is in the best interests of the company (and, potentially, be ready to defend that). That probably makes more sense than an "only J" or "only Y" policy, since those don't take unique circumstances (such as unusually high fare differentials, flight timings, etc.) into account.

The way I apply this is to calculate my hourly wage by the number of hours of productivity the company will gain due to travel in a higher class of travel. For red-eye flights, I also count the extra night of hotel and expenses due to arriving a day early. Given the low differentials usually available for a higher class of travel, it almost always turns out to be cheaper for the company for me to travel LH in a higher class of travel. (Usually, the calculation means that SH in Y is cheaper, and that is fine.)

(They also let us book our own hotels, which I appreciate as I can often find cheaper rates than those available through the official travel agent.)

In general, the thing that would concern me most about a job with a rigid travel policy is the rigidity of their policies. I prefer places where common sense prevails over rigid policies. If they don't trust me to be able to apply common sense to travel, where else will they ignore my judgment in favor of rigid policies? (I'm not saying this applies to your job; however, that's what I would examine rather than focusing on the travel policy in isolation.)

LondonAndy

About 10 years ago I was an employee of a global financial services firm, but worked with a subsidiary that had employees literally all over the world on a weekly basis, and they used a small, local, responsive travel agent who seemed to be able to help with all the IRROPs that would happen. I asked when I started flying to their office on a fortnightly basis if I could pay the differnence between Y (travel policy) and J, and they were happy with that. That was the first year that I got Gold, and haven't looked back since - they have a lot to answer for ;-).

In terms of the original post, if the job was that good, and the travel was to (say) JFK rather than (say) SYD, then I'd take it - the path not taken and all that.

Currently as the Head of HR if a candidate started asking me about the T&E policy during the interview process it would start the alarm bells ringing for me...

DorsetKnob

I've worked for 2 companies in my working career. In theory both have had the same policy 6hrs+ & J, otherwise Y. In practice the policy in both is "what will the client reimburse", usually Y only, in which case throw the policy away you are going Y. If we are lump sum you are going Y, irrespective of policy, unless you have clout. In one of those companies, there was a catch all that said you can travel J irrespective of duration if you travel "regularly" with no definition of what that meant.

TPloser

I once worked for a US company who had an all Y travel policy including the CEO. I never really felt the corporate jet they used was all Y.
And it's amazing how when the vice-presidents flew how they always had a customer in tow and so had to fly with their customer who had a business or fist policy.
Mind you the latter was also used by many at lower levels too.

BertieBadger

Duly educated, and appreciated, thanks. My business related travel (effectively) falls under 4), I hadn't appreciated the lack of flexibility that would come from e.g. 1)

Edit: thanks for also clearing up something that puzzled me. A year or two ago I was travelling fairly regularly on EDI-LHR-YUL with a colleague. I was getting regular POUG offers on the YUL-LHR leg while he never did (180 quid into W, 450 into J). The difference was he was an employee booked through the corporate TA, whereas I was contract and booking my own travel directly on BA.com, so I guess that explains it....