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How does full fare / fully refundable legacy carrier flying work in the real world?

How does full fare / fully refundable legacy carrier flying work in the real world?

Old Aug 9, 2017, 9:26 am
  #16  
 
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Between BDL and PVD
Programs: RapidRewards, SkyPesos, whatever flies where I want to go.
Posts: 270
Originally Posted by chrisl137
I also work for a gov't contractor and work with many other companies that work mostly on gov't contracts and we all seem to have fairly different travel rules. We buy primarily non-refundable (but changeable for a fee, so no BE) tickets. We used to be all fully refundable, but they finally did the math and realized it's cheaper to pay change fees, especially since employees who fly the most also get status and have reduced or no change fee. I rarely am able to book more than a week out, and rarely fly the itinerary as originally booked - one end or the other gets changed. For transcons I take non-stops whenever possible (which is almost always) - it's not worth the extra time plus risk of a misconnect to save a change fee or $50 on a fare. In rare cases when I knew the schedule was likely to have multiple changes I've noted that and recommended that they book refundable and it's been done without a problem. I read the thread about "what stupid things does your company do to save a few pennies" and mine actually does very few of them, so I don't complain much about our travel.

Other companies I work with have policies that they make you fly back for the weekend, even if you're going to be back on monday and it's a transcon. That seems fine on regional flights, but I'd just say no for transcons- it kills a couple days traveling and just leaves you tired from the travel and time zone changes.
I've only gone on a couple of trips for my company, partly because it's such a PITA to travel with them. I'm not sure if our tickets are refundable or not, although I know that one time we bought WN tickets that were $240, when you could buy them for under $161 I think on Flysouthwest.com, so we're not buying whatever the cheapest option is. When planning trips, people are very disorganized, and often pick really expensive days to travel, but then the travel policy makes you pick the cheapest possible flight that it can find, even if it's some insane routing or not the airline/aircraft that you want to fly on.

They try to cut every corner possible, but do it in the dumbest possible way. It's not surprise though, as that type of behavior is common throughout the whole company, not just travel. Cut corners everywhere, with massive wasteful spending everywhere as well. We have a small number of people who travel a LOT, largely to rust belt destinations (as well as some transcon and elsewhere in the US), and I don't know how they put up with all the BS. To top it off, you can only expense 250 miles in your own car, longer and they force you to get a rental.

The per diem is the one intelligent thing that they do, as we end up pocketing more money, and it saves some paperwork doing expense reporting, which sounds like a total nightmare to do receipt by receipt.

They have two of their own planes that fly a shuttle route, luckily I have avoided having to fly on those god-awful things. They are Beech 1900Ds, smaller than commercial regional torture chambers, and from what I've heard, are total pieces of garbage.
BiggAW is offline  
Old Aug 9, 2017, 9:38 am
  #17  
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Join Date: Nov 2013
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Originally Posted by BiggAW
To top it off, you can only expense 250 miles in your own car, longer and they force you to get a rental.
At $0.53/mile (or whatever it is lately), it's almost certainly much cheaper to get a rental for distances that far.

For long drives for us (e.g. LA to SF) if you want to drive yourself, ours will reimburse up to the cost of flying you (including things like the parking etc), which ends up IME being reasonable.


The per diem is the one intelligent thing that they do, as we end up pocketing more money, and it saves some paperwork doing expense reporting, which sounds like a total nightmare to do receipt by receipt.
We do per diem, too, which works out well for me because part of my travel expenses are the petsitters, which I probably couldn't get reimbursed on receipts, but since the per diems are reasonably generous I don't end up taking a loss.
chrisl137 is offline  
Old Aug 9, 2017, 1:56 pm
  #18  
 
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Between BDL and PVD
Programs: RapidRewards, SkyPesos, whatever flies where I want to go.
Posts: 270
Originally Posted by chrisl137
At $0.53/mile (or whatever it is lately), it's almost certainly much cheaper to get a rental for distances that far.

For long drives for us (e.g. LA to SF) if you want to drive yourself, ours will reimburse up to the cost of flying you (including things like the parking etc), which ends up IME being reasonable.
They won't even process a reimbursement for driving over 250 miles. It would OK if it were just a cap of 250, as many people can drive for well below the IRS rate, so it might still make more sense to take their own car.

We do per diem, too, which works out well for me because part of my travel expenses are the petsitters, which I probably couldn't get reimbursed on receipts, but since the per diems are reasonably generous I don't end up taking a loss.
Yeah, it gives a lot more flexibility, and you don't feel like you have to keep track of everything. You just spend whatever you want to, and keep the per diem.
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