Business/First class airfare tickets policy.

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

So, folks should definitely read the policy on how the fare search works.
There's a "time saver" table that gives additional budget the more time one
saves, so it's sometimes as much as $600 additional budget (not merely $100).
(Martin notes this in his email.)

Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> However, if I buy the higher class ticket directly, I'd only get 50% of the
> economy ticket because you want to penalize me.  How is that fair?

The 50% was just a "guess" on how to address the issue; I'm not saying that's
the right number.

This is a classic case from my point of view of "the rich get richer".
Someone might do a flight search, it might yield a high budget because the
flight search has a cheap flight that's really long.  So they get $X+600 as a
budget, but a totally reasonable-length economy ticket is actually only
$X+100 (this is quite typical).  The flyer books that, and they aren't
wealthy, so they can't consider buying an upgrade.

The wealthy first class traveler can happily buy $X+2,000 and get an extra
$500 from a Conservancy member project that the wealthy person can't get.

This may in fact be a bug in the existing "more money if you save more time"
policy, which is complex.  I didn't write that part of the policy; I'm merely
the person who most often has to enforce it.

> I think based on comments on IRC, Bradley is concerned that it can be up to
> $600 more.  But really, the $600 more is because the cheapest flight is
> significantly longer -- it has nothing to do with whatever class of service
> you book.

I think my example above addresses that.  It's perhaps my point that the
algorithm time-based budgeting is more gamable than the old +/- $100, which
we instituted mainly to deal with the issue that, often, the cheapest fare
returned in the search isn't actually bookable.

> To be honest, I doubt I would have even thought about asking for
> preapproval in this situation.  After all, I'm only asking for
> reimbursement for an economy ticket, which is within policy.

I've talked with folks who have corporate travel policies.  It seems most of
them do require that you exhibit an economy receipt that is within policy --
not a receipt for "more" -- and in most cases it seems the receipt is *not*
reimbursed if it isn't <= the flight budget.

Upgrades can be purchased, but it has to be post-hoc and out-of-band.  There
has to be an economy ticket purchase within budget.

> Speaking of penalizing people, you basically allow people to make a choice
> to book their preferred airline.  But if we start talking about fairness,
> why do some people get to earn a lot of miles?

We definitely allow travelers to keep their own FF miles, and the IRS has
been clear that benefits from these programs are intangible [0] fringe
benefits and don't need to be accounted for.

> If there are other arguments, I'd like to hear them but my initial
> impression is like Bdale's -- I'm not sure I see the problem.

Well, your and Bdale's argument is for a change in policy the other way -- to
just let people book whatever they want as long as it goes between the
correct two airports, and let them max out the budget.


[0] I am told by older USA federal employees that for years, federal
    employees were not permitted to participate in these programs because the
    rule were different, and they finally changed like 20 or 30 years ago,
    IIRC.


Bradley M. Kuhn

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