Editorial: Sky-high fares

Thursday, Oct. 4, 2007 | 7:30 a.m.

Federal employees who must travel are too often - and unnecessarily - flying in business and first class rather than coach, which cost U.S. taxpayers about $146 million last year, a federal report says.

The report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office, which is the investigative arm of Congress, says that although the 53,000 premium-class tickets purchased by employees of six federal agencies last year represented fewer than 1 percent of all flights used by federal workers, those flights, nonetheless, accounted for 7 percent of the money spent on all air travel.

Premium-class tickets cost up to five times more than those for coach. Federal employees generally are allowed to fly at the higher fare only when flights are longer than 14 hours or for medical or security reasons. And even in those cases, a supervisor must authorize premium-class flights.

However, $146 million worth - or 65 percent - of the premium-class flights taken last year broke those rules or were not authorized, the GAO reports.

For example, one high-ranking Agriculture Department official flew to Europe for trade negotiations 10 times last year using business-class tickets that cost $62,000, the GAO reports. The same flights in coach would have cost $9,000.

In a story on Wednesday, an Agriculture Department spokeswoman told The New York Times that the official, Ellen Terpstra, appropriately flew business-class because the plane rides would be her sole chance to sleep. But, as the GAO report notes, Terpstra did not acquire proper authorization for the higher-priced tickets.

In another incident, a Defense Department political appointee spent $105,000 on premium-class tickets, citing medical reasons by using a note signed by a peer - not a doctor - to obtain approval.

This is absurd. Although it is necessary for federal employees to travel, it is not necessary for them to do it in high style while taxpayers pick up the tab. These trips are for work and should not be treated as vacations taken at taxpayers' expense.