SeamusSA

That's not my experience at all. On multiple occasions I have contacted the airline directly and they have made changes to an itinerary for which a fed agency issued the ticket, including changing the originating outbound flight. It may be that this is possible because I hold a government travel card and any additional cost can be charged to it.

halls120

Our agency forbids any carrier from altering a reservation until after travel starts, even though the travel is charged to employee government travel cards. I ran into the same prohibition recently when traveling on DOD's dime.

Don't know why, but that is the way it is.

dcdavido

But an upgrade is worth TODs.... :-)

AK-business-traveler

Does anyone know what % of UA's revenue comes from YCA or other government fares? Or what % of pax on any given flight are on a government ticket? Obviously, this second item would vary by route, but am wondering if anyone has heard ballpark figures here.

halls120

I have no idea, but whatever % it is, it's shrinking. Between the cutback in federal government travel and UA losing routes it used to have the contract for, that has to have affected the incoming federal government revenue.

astroflyer

Government fares are frustrating things. I travel occasionally on gov't fares and have had to go through machinations to try to stay on UA. Now actually, it's almost impossible to get from SFO-any DC airport on a gov't fare. The only option is SFO-BWI which is over 3 times as expensive as SFO-Dulles on Virgin America. Hopefully, UA will bid on their new direct route to DCA! I also use California Y fares from time to time which actually (were) very reasonably priced for international travel.

For the main point of this thread:
In the past gov't fares were excluded from the Y-up program on UA. Is the conclusion that they're now treated just like any other Y fare for upgrade purposes? I've noticed they're still excluded from most promotions, but that's fine with me.

Starman

At least the California fares (YCAL) do result in instant-ups on COdbaUA (if of course JN is available, which it usually seems to be even when PN is not).

Alpha Golf

I don't think they'll want to give away capacity -- remember it's last seat avail. Also not sure if they had the route in time for the FY13 bidding.

chelmkamp

It's a bit more complicated than you would think, simply due to the nature of public sector finance. In private sector finance, it's a simple bean counter's maneuver to budget some of the savings from cheaper fares to cover penalties on cancellations or changes (in some organizations, these may even fall under the same line item). If the former is significantly greater than the latter when your actuals come in, you might even win a bonus for saving your company money.

In the public sector, you can't ticket a flight or commence travel (which is an obligation of taxpayer dollars) until your travel authorization is completely approved by a transparent process established by your agency to determine that 1) the travel is authorized by Congress under federal law, and 2) the necessary funds have been appropriated by Congress for said purpose. But since nonrefundable fares often have an immediate or limited ticketing window, if you travel frequently or on rapidly changing schedules (as many of us do, in both private and public sector), it's simply not practical for the authorization process to play through before your ticketing must take place on the limited nonrefundable timeline.

Before you blame the bureaucracy, first consider that all this "red tape" is actually put in to place to protect against waste, fraud and abuse. And it works quite well, recent GSA shenanigans aside.

copperred

I prefer dealing with the 24/7 Carlson/Federal Travel Agency line than dealing with United.

PMCO refused to bid for city pairs the last year they operated as a separate airline and thus last year the routes they trafficked often didn't even show in our travel system. Given that my flight nonstop on US from DCA to MSY was $200 and PMCOdbaUA last fall wanted $1000 via IAH, it's a no contest for me. You take the cheaper option because it's the right thing to do and it's the policy unless you have an amazing justification.

Flights from IAD to KWI/DOH we're at the back of the bus, none of this nonsense about flying in C because it's a long flight.


Having had an AUTH go pear shaped recently, I can give you some insight into how this works. If you're still staying in Y, but go to E+, because the fare code doesn't change, it's fine. You're only eligible for upgrades once you're ticketed, which is usually 72 hours before the flight. In some cases, you can get it ticketed early but that's rare. So what happens if POS SHARES sees you as ticketed and confirmed and the agency travel agency doesn't? Well then the agency can't repurchase the same seat/reservation, but has to back it all out and start over.

The cancellation thing too is mindnumbingly annoying. To cancel/change a flight in our system once travel has started, the original reservation is cancelled and they buy a whole new round trip ticket. That's even more fun when you're abroad and you need to talk to your employer's travel but only 24/7 is available. If it's domestic and we're talking the same day departure and it's MX or the like, then you talk to the airline and just suffer the hell when you get back to redo your travel AUTH.

To the OP:
Our fares are structured like this:
Contract carrier w/ limited availability (under PMUA this was always GCA coded) - you click on a flight and it almost always says "not available", disappears and then you go to select the next one, until you've clicked each one and they all disappear. Rarely are there any seats lately, due in large part to reduced capacity.

Contract Carrier - City Pairs or other limited flights, usually coded TCA i.e. T class fares (well T-ish) and occasionally YCA (lately this happens more than it used to because the G and T fares are gone, even 4 months out!

Alt GSA - which is always blank. No idea what it's for

GSA - fully refundable not subject to contract but still less than Other

Other - fully refundable fares, in the open market. Usually staggeringly expensive.

roadkit

I am required by department policy to buy fully refundable Y fares, and never hesitate to apply miles or SWUs to upgrade.

halls120

I disagree. Our agency has been following the rules regard obtaining authorization prior to purchasing tickets, and our personnel have had no problem then securing nonrefundable tickets.

What some federal agencies want to do is continue wasting the taxpayers dollar by waiting until the last minute to purchase refundable YCA fares, when by a little prior planning, saving a little money. Unfortunately, far too many federal employees think their agency travel funds are "free money," and show little regard for the people paying taxes to support their mostly useless boondoggles to Las Vegas.....

Your agency is wasting taxpayer money. There is no GSA requirement to purchase fully refundable fares.

qukslvr619

Regarding this, if you use DTS I believe there is a glitch with clicking on a flight that shows available, says "selection not available" and then disappears. I say that because a couple of times I checked GDS and it still showed available in that particular fare bucket. Called SATO and they were able to find the flight and book it. Now when I encounter this issue, I copy down flight details and then click "request CTO assistance" and paste the flights I want booked in the notes. Not sure why it shows as unavailable even though it is but you may want to check before ruling a flight option out.

copperred

We are strongly discouraged from ever calling the travel agent/requesting CTO. It's already a $15 fee to use the system at all and then they'll tack on more fees for that. It's happening much more than it used to. I try to book the cheapest flight I can get without taking a 16 hour layover in BFE, but sometimes it seems like the system tries to make that impossible.

Unless it is one of the exempt agencies, such as one funded by NAF, an independent commission/board, a GSE, many of the financial regulatory agencies (the people who whine if they have to sit in Y for more than 6 hours) or the legislative branch and the OEP, you're begging for an IG investigation. Or the front page of the Washington Post.

halls120

Why? Are you saying he can't use miles or SWU to upgrade?