Since I work for Arthur Andersen, I can tell you that we are not comped to PE -- at least, that fact has not been communicated to us.

As an American Airlines flyer, I do get some perks with our Andersen corporate contract (basically corporate discounts), but we are not comped any FF levels on AA or UA.

--JIm

The company I work for has 4 preferred airlines, Continental, Delta, Cathay Pacific, and United.


None of them comp us elite status.

Continental does however offer us complimentary upgrades on certain flights, but I've never seen the exact policy spelled out.

On the other hand, Starwood comped us to "Corporate Preferred." This level grants lounge access, but without the points bonus of the standard premier levels.

I work for a large (150K employees +) company whose corporate (AX) travel department strongly encourages us to fly the friendly skies. On a recent JFK-HKG booking I was told that that my name, flight etc. would show up on an exception report due to the fact that I asked that a CX ticket be issued saving my company approximately $2300.00. Evidently some bonehead within our CFO and/or purchasing organization made a revenue commitment to UAL but did not negotiation guaranteed lowest cost tickets. I routinely receive premium memberships from a number of hotel/car rental companies but have never received an offer of complimentary PE status from UAL. Incidentally, I am EP with AA and of course fly CX due to oneworld and all of those nice bonus miles.

I've been comped to elite on TWA, CO, US Air and Delta. But it hasn't worked. I rarely flew those airlines before and being Elite hasn't going changed my mind.

So those of you who do use those airlines needn't worry about all those who've been comped.

transborder I must come to the defense of "some bonehead within our CFO and/or purchasing organization". As a finance guy who supports the purchasing organization of a large (100k employees) company, I find a common mistake in perception of the people with regard to airline tickets. What you see is not always what you get in this world. We have a deal negotiated with our preferred airline that if we but full fare tickets and fulfull our commitment to seats filled on various routes we will get a sizeable rebate back from the airline. Last year the rebate was in the millions of dollars. People would wonder why they had to book on the preferred carrier when they perceived the cost to be cheaper elsewhere when in reality after the rebate was factored in the preferred carrier was much cheaper. The problem was the travel department continues to charge the travelers the full cost of the tickets and keeps the rebate in their cost center.

Sorry for being off topic but I cannot stand by and watch the good name of Finance people be slandered!

My husband works for a LARGE company - Fortune 500. He was comped PE once but through the travel dept, not automatically as an employee. He had a long run as a PE, was just shy of 50K, and had also been a 1K. He works in marketing with some guys that have had PE comped to them by UAL without begging and whining. UAL is the airline of choice at his company. He knows about the rebates to the travel dept but his dept is charged the rate on the ticket. Kind of a bum internal deal.

PSU Lion...My reply was not meant to really offend anyone who supports our company's purchasing decisions. I just see these types of decisions in many different aspects of our company. As to your point regarding the rebates, that never appears as a credit to my annual travel expenditures which necessitates me continuing to "haggle" and make choices other then the friendly skies.

In case when you have to charge your client for the travel expenses. Are these kick back legal? Ethical?

In most of these cases the travel department pocket the profit and leave the client staffs to justify the high full fare tickets.

PSU Lion:

My previous corpopration, as well as my current one (for what it's worth) have similar deals with the airlines, for the same costing reasons as yours has. It adds up to a significant savings to the company over the year.

We are given reasonable latitude when booking our tickets, but if at all possible, the preferred airlines are...uh, well...preferred.

[This message has been edited by hnechets (edited 02-23-2000).]

Just after I stopped work ('93), my company (a consulting firm with ~3,000 employees) selected United as its preferred airline. As part of this selection, United comped all AVP's to Premier and all VP's to Premier Exec (each level represents roughly 10% of employees)

Actually, I think this was very smart on both my company's and United's part. We have consultants all over the country, each with their own preferred airline; at least nobody could claim they'd lose their bonuses or elite status in their old airline. And while some consultants don't fly very much, United didn't give away very much for them.

I don't know if this was a one-time thing or if it's been repeated as UA's preferred status has continued these several years.

If you hold the purse strings of the corp travel budget you can be comped. If you want to forgo some of the 'rebate' you can arrange for the comping of employees.

Simple as that.

Nick




[This message has been edited by Merry (edited 02-27-2000).]

The company I work for has had a corporate contract with United for years. I have never been comped any status and have had to earn 1K status the hard way every year (UA shuttle segments). Heck, even in years when I was a few segments short of 1K, United moved me down to Premier Exec.