halls120

Our booking engine defaults to non-refundable penalty fares. We are required to purchase them unless we can made a solid case that our trip will be changed/cancelled before we depart.

Boghopper

It's something like GS, then Y and B sorted by status, then instruments sorted by status, and then deadbeats, I mean, ah CPUs (also sorted by status).

6rugrats

Can't imagine, as the lists now sometimes for domestic flights are 50+ long sometimes!

Maxwell Smart

Interesting. In my agency, we are required to make a commitment to PERSONALLY eat the cost of a non-refundable ticket if the trip cancels. Needless to say, we only book xCA refundable fares as a result.

halls120

Our budget folks ran the numbers, and found out it was far cheaper to have us book penalty fares and pay the random change fee than to keep paying for YCA and CA fares. They tell us that in the 8 months or so we've been flying this way, we've saved serious coin.

dcdavido

I missed it too. Myself and my wife, and she was GS. That was when I swore off UA until things got fixed. Funny, you look at 7+ days out and maybe 2 to 4 seats "sold" (these maybe the set asides mileage seats) and then it goes to full capacity. I now fly AA through MIA and as 50K on AA (but climbing) and I usually get the upgrade. Prior to CO's take over, I don't think I missed a single upgrade as a 1K on that IAD to TPA route. Remember, there was so little real bought FC traffic that they switched it to all-coach TED for a time.

By transcon, I meant trans-continental. So IAD to SFO/LAX/etc..

As I understand it, the upgrade order is (in theory although many people have reported it not working as such):

GS
Y,B fares (M fares for 1ks, sorted by status)
instruments (miles, regional upgrades, etc..., sorted by status)
Free upgrades (sorted by status)

My understanding is that they limited YCA to silver or above, to avoid FC from being totally swamped, but right after Global Services, a YCA fare trumps everyone else.

drewguy

I guess it depends on agency, types of flights, and nature of business.

Our agency did the same thing and concluded the savings weren't enough to justify purchasing non-refundable fares, given cancellation penalties, so we have been told not to.

That said, a lot of the time the _CA is available as well as the YCA so we're not travelling Y class all the time, sucking up those upgrades from the private sector.

bwiflyer01

I'm not sure how common this really is. Unless a gov traveler happens to fly routes where the city pairs have been awarded to United, it would be pretty difficult to get elite status in the first place.

In most cases, we don't have a choice over who we fly. I fly to DFW several times a year. I am stuck flying AA.

In some cases, we have a little flexibility. Take Denver for example. UA has the city pair contract out of IAD and BWI. Frontier has the contract for DCA. If I want to fly UA, I can trek to BWI and it costs $161 for the CA and $242 for the YCA versus $157 for the CA and $210 for the YCA with Frontier out of DCA. Unless I book last minute, there's almost always CA space available. My agency's travel policy is that we must choose flights with CA availability unless there is no CA availability that day.

If I want to fly UA from IAD, no dice. The one way is $453 for the CA and $550 for the YCA. In fact, just recently we told a high-ranking official (e.g., assistant secretary level) that she couldn't fly from IAD and had to choose DCA or BWI instead because the price difference was too much.

So in order to take advantage of the Y-up, I have to fly UA enough to have elite status and I need to be lucky enough that only the YCA fare is available. In some markets (EWR-SAN for example), UA has the city pair contract and offers only a YCA fare (no CA option). In the EWR-SAN example, the YCA is at a very affordable $251 each way. That is definitely the exception more than the rule.

Finally, at least at my agency, our travel system is programmed to ticket itineraries three days before the outbound departure. You can't upgrade until your itinerary is ticketed. That makes it a little more difficult to get the Y-up. We can request to be ticketed earlier, but we must have a good reason. When I used miles to upgrade last year, I was able to get approval to ticket earlier so I could be waitlisted for the upgrade.

It's been standard policy at my agency that we book GSA city pair fares, but we've seen substantial cuts this year to our travel budget and our travel office has been more liberal in approving non-contract fares, but there's a separate approval process for it. It's only allowed for travelers who are reasonably sure their travel plans won't change (though if the plans do change, our agency will pay the penalty). We've determined we come out ahead in the long run even after accounting for the occasions where we eat the penalty. Of course, if every agency does this, it undermines the GSA city pair program and makes it more difficult for the federal government to negotiate lower airfares for the gov as a whole.

Perhaps not every agency is as strict as we are on travel, but given the recent scrutiny, it would be foolish for agencies not to tighten their travel policies. We've seen an uptick in FOIA requests regarding travel and conferences. We have senior executives closely reviewing even routine travel authorizations. The head of our agency (who travels quite a bit) does not have elite status on any airline and travels coach, even to Asia.

Recent GSA ridiculousness aside, government is not the employer of choice if you want to take advantage of the typical business travel perks, whatever few there are that remain.

halls120

If the difference between the YCA/CA fares and the penalty fares is <$200, we take the refundable fare. If it is >$200, we go with the penalty fare, as the cancellation fee is $150.00.

International is where serious money can be saved. I have a potential trip to Asia on the horizon, and the YCA fare is currently $3100. The penalty fare is $1900. You can guess which one I'll be using.

Thanks to the idiots at GSA, I spend an increased amount of time scrutinizing every travel request from the 45 people who work for me.

That said, it is time well spent. When I assumed my current position, I conducted an informal audit of our travel budget, and what I found was appalling. If people think GSA is an anomaly, they are fooling themselves.

flyerguy99

Interesting discussion, bwi and halls.

At my agency, our policy has been and continues to be that flying the CA or YCA fare with the contract carrier is mandatory. In seven years I don't think I've been on a single domestic flight on a city-pair route that wasn't the government fare, even when significantly lower public (non-refundable) fares were available.

I suppose I should say my worksite rather than agency as I work for a very large federal agency and rules do vary. That said, I've been at a couple of worksites and while other travel rules have varied, city-pair-or-bust has been true at all of them. At the rank and file traveller level, it's presented to us as the law requires it, period. I know that's not quite true, but I still thought there was strong policy guidance to stick to the contract rates unless the difference is truly huge, due to the program stability concerns mentioned above.

I'm not in DC, and our contract rate to DCA is currently 400% (!) higher than our BWI rate. Since that difference will easily cover not only a rental car but a hotel night, we need very strong justification to fly to National vs BWI and driving in/out of the city.

>Unless a gov traveler happens to fly routes where the city pairs have been awarded to United, it would be pretty difficult to get elite status in the first place.


True, but that can happen. I have a friend who's a federal employee in a relatively small town, where virtually the only service to that airport is short hops on UA to a UA hub. He travels frequently domestically and internationally and almost 100% of it is United, so he's racked up some high MP levels on govt travel.

bwiflyer01

At my last agency, it was pretty near impossible to go with non-contract. I once had to travel to BUF and the city pair was US connecting through PHL. At that time, WN didn't participate in the city pairs program and for me to book a nonstop BWI-BUF on WN that was refundable and cheaper than US (and that was before accounting for bag fees) required me to fill out a form and have it signed by people several levels up.

If you asked most people at my current agency, they would say we're not allowed to book non contract. In our travel system, the non contract fares require you to click on a separate tab and they all appear in red (which people told me to stay away from booking anything in red).

Booking non contract seems to have been approved when justified, but not promoted as an option and doesn't appear anywhere in our travel policy. Recently, we've been gently encouraging it as we're at the point where we can't absorb the travel budget cuts and still accomplish mission critical travel.

Non contract does have its issues. Normally, you have to ticket within 24 hours of booking. For my agency, it normally takes 2-4 days for a travel authorization to make its way through the various levels of approval. If I want to book a non contract airfare, I have to email everyone in my routing chain and give them the heads up that I want to book non contract and to please approve my travel authorization as soon as possible. I've been able to make it work the few times I've tried it, but I only bother when the price difference is substantial.

greathustle

For profit business has, by and large, been doing this since they invented the difference between penalty and refundable fares. I guess way late is better than not yet.

halls120

In order to make it easier to use non-contract airfare, our agency has just shifted to an all-electronic process to obtain travel authorizations, which means it never takes more than 24 hours to get an authorization, provided you submit it during the work week. Surprisingly efficient for the federal government.

drewguy

My experience is very much like bwiflyer01's in terms of agency policy (although if asked they will ticket early to allow for upgrades--the 3-day policy was a result of too many tickets not being refunded).

I think the point, as flyerguy99's post highlights, is that for many government travelers they will not come close to even silver level because of the contract fares being on many airlines. A small number may get elite status because United happens to be the contract carrier for the city pair they happen to fly a lot.

And, for international travelers, at least in the DC area, a large number of the contract flights to cities where travel is more likely (London, Paris, Brussels, Tokyo, Beijing) the contract carrier is United. For government travelers on those routes, 3-4 flights a year gets you at least silver if not gold status, especially if there's a YCA fare with a 150% PQM bonus.

Superguy

It's not too hard as long as you have options in an area, like IAD/DCA/BWI and the fare differences aren't outrageous. Usually they were within $50 at one place so management never had an issue signing off. It also helps if there isn't a city pair award - UA often has a gov't fare available and that can be taken.