govt employees can't fly on foreign airline, but astronauts fly on Russian spacecraft
 

I am a little confused about why US government employees must fly on U.S.
airlines. Is it to save money, jobs, or for reasons of national security?

If that's the case, why are U.S. astronauts flying on Russian spacecraft? Isn't
space travel still a form of travel? Are U.S. astronauts not U.S. government
employees?

If a U.S. government employee is from from a US city to a foreign city and
route is served by both U.S. and foreign airlines, do they still have to fly
on the U.S. airline even if the foreign airline's ticket prices are 25% lower?

The rule is that employees on official US government business must travel on US flag carriers, unless no such option is available (along with a few other exceptions based on trip length). As the US currently runs no human space program, the exception would apply.

I believe the main rationale behind the rule is money and jobs. Ticket cost is not allowed as an exception -- if the cheapest US carrier price to Paris is $2000, and Air France has a $800 special, you're stuck paying the $2000.

The astronauts aren't using the GSA city pairs program and the Fly America act does not apply to space travel. Totally separate issues.

As for Fly America Act, yes, in theory one would have to pay the higher US airline price, but that rarely is the case because of the contract fares.

BTW, the rule is only that it be a US carrier flight, not metal, so codeshares are okay, and it applies only on flights to/from US.

Having done government travel, it's rarely a real burden, especially because traveling business class on the government's expense is extremely rare, and that's when foreign flag carriers have a leg up.

What is the alternative? Since the US has nothing going to space right now......

NASA codeshares.

As others have said, it depends on what other options are available. I can tell you it's not followed to a "t". While in ROTC, I was accepted to do a "Cultural Immersion Program" to Turkey, run through Air Force ROTC. The group met up at JFK and then we all flew Turkish Airlines from JFK to Istanbul, despite the fact that Delta also ran a nonstop JFK-IST flight. A cadet from my detachment went to Turkey on the same program the following year. They flew AF out of BOS and connected in Paris before continuing on to Istanbul. It was the same deal for cadets I knew who went to other countries - they usually flew an airline of the host nation (the group that went to India flew Air India, the group that went to South Africa flew SAA, etc.). Perhaps that was part of the deal between the Air Force and the host nations for the program I went on was that we flew their carrier.

On active duty I've seen the similar events. My first assignment on active duty was working on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and a couple people from my office had to go to Turkey. Again, despite the fact they could get to Istanbul on a US carrier via JFK on DL, they flew UA to Munich and switched to LH to get to Turkey. Not sure if their flight was coded as a United flight or not though.

:D Too funny, especially as I've recently been studying the "race to space" of the '50's and '60's.

What are the outer space per diems like?

$3.00 per day. Really.

That is the funniest thing I've heard this year! :) ^^^

probably more like $0? since food, water, housing, utilities, clothing, health care,
internet access, Vaseline, insurance, are all provided by the government? :D :D :D
and there's a strict no-tipping policy in space.

Coin laundry?

Wirelessly posted (Samsung Galaxy S: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.0.4; en-us; SGH-T989 Build/IMM76D) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30)

No per diem when clothing, meals and accomodation are provided.

Science Goy has it right -- when meals, etc. are provided, the per diem is currently $3/day for incidental expenses.

Though on the ISS, not sure what they can spend it on... maybe they have some of those coin-operated binocular/telescopes mounted somewhere? :D

Poker?