Jagboi

A company I worked at had a Y only policy and co-workers were working on a contract with a government department in Pakistan. I forget the exact routing but it was something like YYC-FRA overnight flight, 15 hour layover, FRA-DXB- 12 hour layover then DXB-KHI. I think it was something like 50 hours in planes and airports all in Y with no lounge access.

When they finally arrived it was straight into the office for all day meetings where it 40 degrees and no air conditioning in the building, and they had left in Canadian winter and were not used to that heat. My collogue said they were all walking zombies at that point and had no idea what they actually signed. A case of penny wise and pound foolish I think.

flyer200

So you win by losing an extra day of you life?

tigertanaka

As someone who does 20-30 trips a year to Stockholm, I can say that most Swedish companies I know have a strict Y only policy for Europe (from CEO down) but J is allowed on LH trips (although W is generally seen as more desirable from both a company and colleague perspective, especially for day flights). It certainly would not be appropriate to talk about booking J or boasting about an upgrade even if you had just flown in the front cabin.

The thing that really blows the mind of Scandinavians is a UK company car policy: "You mean you actually get a better company car because you have received a promotion?"

ChampagneSocialist

It would work for 20-something consultants - especially if able to tag on real downtime for sightseeing - anyone with family not so much.

Wong Jnr

Friend of mine used to work for a large pharma and junior staff were expected to fly long haul Y and go straight to meetings. That all stopped when some poor chap fell asleep at the wheel and was killed. They changed their policy after that to if they had meetings within a certain time after a flight it would be J, otherwise if Y a nights rest would be given.
Unfortunately we live in a world where something has to go terribly wrong before common sense is acted upon...

Back to the topic though, I've recently taken a job half way across the world with the same group, in a more senior position but with a Y policy, where as previously it was J.
That I can live with as my occasional trip from SIN-KUL is far easier than LHR-KUL that I used to do

newyorklondon

Does any of this transliterate to the self-employed? I am, and I suspect many on here are too.

There must be an equal range of contracted travel provision vs personal choice in this area.

Raffles

newyorklondon

This (J+ travel for contracted work) has - basically - been my experience. There are occasionally some variations (a fixed-sum travel budget, no travel budget but a higher fee) where a greater degree of personal choice comes into play.

I've seen this many times over the years, and I've always been surprised. I generally keep quiet about it, but it remains surprising to me.

Keep it Riel

Many moons ago I was expected to travel to SFO in Y while the 3 consultants I'd hired to help us flew in J, as per their agreement. Fortunately the ridiculousness of this was recognised and I was allowed to join them. I was expected to express inordinate gratitude however!

our_kid

Swissroll

When I first started travelling on business as a farily junior employee it was Y everywhere and I was just happy to be going to interesting places paid for by someone else. They were very good tho in that travel was on company time not your. Next job it was 5 years J under 8 hours F over - They really looked after you and lots of happy hard working employees. Finally marriage and kids meant time to stop , joined a company who a couple of years in opened up a centre in Delhi and immediately changed their policy of J to a flight time 1 hour more than the length of the Delhi flight. They had an impressive travel policy all about the wellbeing of the staff, reality was you had to travel in your time and the near overnighter outbound straight to office- I refused to travel and as the pressure ramped up on me to do my bit - just quit. Anyway to answer the question, its J or I'm remaining on the ground.

mattyw

Would AUPs and the like be claimable as non-rechargeable expenses if the self-employed or contractors were only able to recharge the client for Y?

flying_pig

Oh, I know. That kind of culture is unfortunately not infrequent, quite the contrary: that's precisely what I consider sad. I want however to reiterate that it is not "SOP" or the norm everywhere when working for global companies. I think young talent should choose carefully who they want to work for; they should not be led to believe that the only alternative is "sucking it up" and have a miserable work life.

MPH1980

Actually - in that circumstance - I would regard it as a win. I have a young family and when I get back to them - I want to be fresh and rested so I can spend time with them, not trying to catch back up on my sleep or being cranky because I'm tired.

So if I'm going to be asked to go 11 hours in Y, straight into an all day meeting, early flight back the following day etc - I expect some rest time and I expect it on the company's time, not on mine.

When I'm travelling regularly, my family time is even more important to me than normal, so if you want me to give up every other Sunday and want me to travel all over the world in cramped conditions, there'd better be some other form of payoff (in terms of rest time, in terms of hugely inflated pay or in terms of conditions of travel). Otherwise someone else can do that job.

When I started travelling for work (20 odd years ago) - the company had a Y only policy and I was just excited to be travelling, but I did one or two long hauls a year - so Y was fine. Once I moved to a job where travel was regular and it was to similar places all the time back and forth - I became much more jaded. I spent one summer in what I described as my 'permanent icelandic timezone' as I went back and forth over the atlantic every weekend (one week London, one week East Coast). Had my company not been flexible about my travel, when and how, I would have said no and that would have cost the company contracts and money. They could have got someone else in to do the job - but they'd have lost 3 months of PS revenue while they did so.

A company that looks at you and says "you will be in <x> on <y>" without asking "Can you?" before that and failing to understand when it asks you to do something physically demanding (and it is) like that it is the wrong company to work for IMHO.

And - frankly - I treat my employees in the way I'd expect to be treated. I had a team member who missed a flight due to a mistake by our TA (wrong name on ticket, no one spotted it) and the client he was due to spend time with were (righly) irked and demanded he be present the following day. The only flight that would make it was a very late flight out of Luton (when he'd already been up at 5am to make the first error flight) and he agreed to keep the client happy. I made it clear to him that it was optional, that I would smooth it with the client if he didn't feel he was able to, and that once he was back on the Thursday, I didn't expect to see him until the Monday.

pa3lsvt

Our policy is interesting:

Y only, unless at least one segment is >8 hours, then the entire trip (in one direction) can be in J. Applies to all employees, from Sr. VP (our highest ranking employee in our division) to janitor.

The employee has a cash option (> US$1000) to accept Y for the longhaul included trip. Most of my colleagues go with the cash option. I haven't had an opportunity to choose yet as I only fly within North America.

I hear a lot of complaints when they get routed EWR-FRA-South Asia, as EWR-FRA is blocked at 7:30. It seems the policy was set to be just above that very common routing for our executives.