Business/First class airfare tickets policy.

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 12:33 AM Bradley M. Kuhn
<bkuhn at sfconservancy.org> wrote:
>
> Hey all, the list has been quiet for a while so might as well start a
> controversial discussion to get it going again! :)
>
> First of all, I am purposely not naming which project or the individual was
> the catalyst mentioned below -- the goal is not to shame them, but to
> discuss possible policy changes to prevent the privileged from abusing the
> travel budgets.
>
> Also, you'll have a hard time following this if you aren't familiar with the
> flight-search-based budget rules in the travel policy, so if you are rusty
> on those, you may want to take a look at the travel policy section regarding
> that before reading the rest:
>   https://sfconservancy.org/projects/policies/conservancy-travel-policy.html
>
>
> So, we've recently had a traveler for a member project become aggressive
> with Conservancy -- demanding that they should be permitted to book
> business/first class tickets without the required preapproval.  Since this
> issue has come up, and IIRC it has never been discussed here explicitly, I
> thought it might be useful to discuss here.  Currently, the policy on
> business/first class travel is:
>
> >> #### Class of Service
>
> >> Coach and/or Economy Airfare is the only acceptable class for all flights
> >> (domestic and international) unless a PLC provides a special exception
> >> and a valid reason (such as a need for business class due to a documented
> >> medical reason) to Conservancy for written approval.
>
> Historically, since this policy was enacted circa 2011, there are exactly
> two instances of this clause being exercised (unrelated to the issue above).
> In both cases, there was a serious medical issue for the traveler and both
> the PLC and a Conservancy officer gave a one-time pre-approved the
> first/business class flight.  (Again, not going to name names of projects or
> individual here due to privacy, etc.)
>
> It seems to me this policy is functioning.  I am extremely reluctant to
> change this policy, despite that one project is currently pressuring us to
> change it.  The current policy doesn't prohibit business/first class travel,
> but requires extra *preapprove* steps before booking.  In the case we are
> currently facing, the traveler was aware of the policy and simply 'assumed'
> that they would be reimbursed at the full flight-budget amount from the
> economy flight search.
>
> Admittedly, it would be more convenient for us in processing travel expenses
> if there was some "auto rule" in place.  From a logistic perspective,
> anything that doesn't require preapproval makes staff's life much easier.
>
> But, even though it would personally save me time in processing requests, I
> am uncomfortable with an "auto-max-out budget" in this situation.  Such a
> rule would have the weird effect of allowing the wealthy and privileged to
> always "max out" their budget, using the budget funds to offset their first
> class experience, while those who book coach and cannot afford to pay
> themselves the exorbitant ticket prices don't get that same opportunity (we
> can't just "give extra money" to those who book a flight that's less then
> their budget from the search).  In essence, an "auto max of your budget" is
> a method for the rich to get (slightly) richer.
>
> One idea I had is that we could have a short-circuit rule added to the
> policy that would state that (for example) exactly *one-half* the flight
> budget will be paid if the budget is exceeded without required preapproval
> before booking.  This in my mind would give the best of both worlds -- those
> who don't / refuse to follow the rules are still penalized, but not fully.
>
> (I'd want to couple this, though, with a strict rule that says a missing
> flight search means that *no* flights are reimbursed in any event no matter
> what, because this is the biggest time-waster we have in travel policy
> enforcement, because despite that we pre-create tickets now and draw
> attention to the issue, lots of travelers don't bother to do the required
> flight search at least two weeks before travel.  I realize that's an
> orthogonal issue of course.)
>
> This is similar BTW to what we already do with hotels: if you fail to get
> preapproval before your hotel stay, only the maximum GSA/Dept of State
> budget is paid.  However, I am wondering if we should also switch that to be
> one-half as well, for similar reasons: it allows people to book fancy hotels
> and particularly the Dept of State rates are often well above the average
> hotel price for an area.
>
> I wonder if perhaps we could use this "fail to get preapproval,
> short-circuit to one-half" principle as a method throughout the travel
> policy to solve many of the pre-approval issues that we've faced.
>
> I'm curious what others who travel under Conservancy's policy think about
> all this.  I realize I've brought up various unrelated issues, but they all
> really relate to the same thing: maxing out a frugal budget in an effort to
> offset what are effectively luxury expenses.
>
>  * * *
>
> BTW, keep in mind that zero-cash-cost upgrades, such as mileage upgrades or
> frequent flyer upgrade certificates, are not at issue here.  The policy (and
> the itself IRS, actually), explicitly don't consider that as the
> "organization paying for first class", provided that the flight(s) are
> otherwise within policy.
>
> Speaking for myself, I am probably the second-most-frequently subject to the
> travel policy in Conservancy (after Karen), as we both travel a lot for
> Conservancy and the policy applies to both of us just as it applies to all
> of you.  I occasionally get zero-cost upgrades due to FF benefits, which I
> find a wonderful treat the few times it happens, but generally I spend a
> *lot* of my life sitting in coach airplane seats, often desperately fighting
> for arm-rest space so I can do Conservancy work while I travel.
>
> SO, yeah, I *personally* would really find it easier to work and sleep on
> the plane if I could get upgraded more often, but I really don't even want
> to start going down the road of saying: "some of us *deserve* first class
> because <REASON THAT IS NOT MEDICAL>".  It's just not the culture of the
> kind of organization that I want to work for.  I don't feel comfortable with
> a travel the policy that lets those who can afford first-class travel for
> cash be able to maximize their coach budgets.

I'm not (and doubt I ever will be) personally impacted by this policy.
But I work at a large travel company & have filed lots of flight
expenses under policies that have worked differently over the years.
So perhaps some of the following is useful.

There's no perfect solution to this problem. All travel expense
systems can be gamed at the expense of payer.

But I think for the problem you're dealing with the least bad thing
for everyone is simply allow people to book first-class fares, *but*
say that they'll only be reimbursed up to a $ amount that's equivalent
to the cheapest fare that can be found *not* only on the date/time in
question, but e.g. any date/time within a 2 week window between those
two airports. You'd still leave in place the first class
special/medical exemption, i.e. you could request to be fully
reimbursed if you had a good reason.

This solves the problem as I understand it, which Bdale Garbee is
confused about upthread, and maybe I'm confused too. So let me
rephrase it to make sure I understood it:

The policy says "book economy" and then also "we reimburse
(domestically) up to $750". So I think you're afraid that I can "max
out" the policy, book a $1000 first-class ticket, have the SFC pay
$750, I pay $250, but I could have instead taken a $400 economy class
flight. Now the SFC has paid $350 more than it needed to ($750-$400).

So that's obviously bad for the SFC. That's why you just allow people
to book first class *and* in that case add the date flexibility and
say you'll pay for what the lowest acceptable economy fare was.

I.e. if it's any two dates within some window you'll most likely be
able to find a $350 flight instead, allow people to expense that.
You've saved $50 over economy, the flyer has paid $650 ($1000-$350)
for the upgrade instead of a "fair" $600 ($1000-$400), but at least
you didn't end up paying for all but $300 ($1000-$700) by allowing
them to "max out".

But if somebody can afford a $650 upgrade shouldn't they just pay for
the $400 flight themselves? I'm assuming that these are cases (e.g.
from my experience in business) where you're obligated to pay for the
flight anyway, because you're sending someone to a conference.

So you were always going to pay at least $400, so why not pay $50 less
for the flexible $350 fare per "first-class upgrade" policy, and allow
the person flying to pay $650 for an upgrade. They're "overpaying" $50
in some sense, but if they're not price sensitive enough to just take
economy they probably don't care about the difference between $650 and
$600 that much.

But if you're *not* obligated to pay for the flight in the first
place, and this is e.g. the "conference attendees too poor to travel"
sort of thing that's would seem to be a different thing, but as we'll
see not really.

Because if you say I can't book first class, you still give me as the
flyer an incentive to box you into dates & times *within* the policy
that I know to be the cheapest for me if my intention all along was to
upgrade to first class. There's no way for you to stop that, although
much of the travel policy seems to be focused on trying really hard. I
can always lie to you, and call the airline later and pay for the
upgrade separately.

But couldn't I just do that anyway and never use the sort of
"first-class upgrade" policy I've outlined above? Sure, but those
sorts of flight searches are going to cost me time, and ultimately I'm
looking at "losing" the difference between two economy fares, so
likely I won't care if I'm paying for the first-class upgrade anyway,
but I might (and you'll lose money) if I'm facing the prospect of
either a long-haul flight in economy, or paying for the whole thing
myself.

While we're on the topic of misaligned economic incentives, this is
one other part of the policy that stands out to me: QUOTE "if you’re
attending a conference that runs Monday through Friday, the search
must have you arriving no earlier than Sunday, and leaving no later
than Saturday." END QUOTE.

I assume the intent here is to avoid people using SFC money to go to a
"conference" that's really just their own personal vacation plus a
conference.

But the result if you assume that people are mostly honest and aren't
setting out to game the policy for its own sake is that you're
overpaying. Flights are generally cheaper in the middle of the week,
so the ideal conference-goer from a cost standpoint should be one
willing to arrive/leave on e.g. Wednesday, and who'd pay for a hotel
on all dates except the conference dates. You pay for a hotel you were
paying for anyway, pay *less* for the flights because the flyer is
more flexible with dates, they get a vacation at their own expense.
It's a win-win.