Most of my experience comes to play on the audit end of the travel spectrum. I have 20 + years experience working in the finance arena; and currently serve as my Bureau’s travel ‘expert.’ I work a lot on the internal review or audit side of the house, as well as provide TDY travel training internally.
One of the major items I stress to travelers is the usage of the Contract City Pair Fares (CCP’s), and not only is the government traveler mandated to utilize them by the Federal Travel Regulations (FTR); there are multiple benefits to them as well.
One of the major benefits to utilizing CCP’s is the ability to make changes to your reservations without penalties up until the ticketing date at no additional charges. In my agency we ticket 2 business days before travel; so this saves us a lot of money as our travelers; especially upper management seem to constantly change their travel plans. If they need to change their plans after they have been ticketed that is possible as well; we simply call the agent, and have the tickets re-issued and pay an agent assist fee.
Another great benefit to CCP’s is last seat availability; as you all know if you have flown anywhere recently, all seats on the airplane are normally full. If you are flying certain airlines, they block out a lot of the seats and try to sell them as upgrade seats. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have an assigned seat as a government traveler on a CCP fare; because you have last seat availability, and they have to seat you in one of those ‘upgraded’ seats that they didn’t sell if that is all that is available.
By: Shirley Keller
“The contents of this message are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the Government or my agency.”