He should have been able to book through a government travel agency. They have agreements with US carriers.

The government sometimes pays more for the flexibility of being ablle to change or cancel a ticket at the last minute.

You as a private consumer will pay more for this as well.

The buy American act can be a nightmare to interpert but when I was writing contracts, I found that DOD was the only agency that really enforced it.

LW had to go to Paris, France? to discuss the election!

They could not do this at (let's be generous) Starbucks? (We deplorables would be happy at Krispy Kreme.)

My heart bleeds. Seriously.

$2,500 to Paris?

Bullshit.

Well if you intend to spend federal money in the age of Skype on plane tickets then I'd rather it be internally. The Icelandic carrier of which there is only 1 has a very different set of regulations to deal with. It's not staff pay as the US carriers make slightly more. 44k overall average us carriers 53k. It's not fuel as that price is generally controlled but oil prices. It's not maintenance on the mechanical level, safe is safe if the FAA requires anything above that then that has nothing to do with the carriers. Mogenson is bathing in money so it's not the magnanimous CEO. It's not the cost of retirement packages from the golden age as most of those are long dead. So where is all that extra money going? I did some quick searching and I could not find any legit explanation.

Oh and He's full of shit. Nothing flying out of DC is anything close to $500. Mid week flights are roughly 1600 if he flies on a Friday it goes up. Now if you were flying from JFK to CDG then yes WOW is roughly $600 Aeroflot is even cheaper. The pilot is probably cocked AF but their safety record is currently top notch. I bet if Hillary had been elected I bet homey G here would have been silent. Check his WaPo pieces he's as unbiased as the average SJW. Well ok maybe not that bad but not impartial.

My flight wasn't even on a U.S. airline, but a code-share with a European airline that shall remain nameless.

Sure.

What was the paint scheme on the aircraft? did you catch the tail number? I suspect that the first letter was "N". According to this theory, I've taken Air France flights into little podunk US airports.

Gog calls it:

$2,500 to Paris?

Bullshit.

Behold the power of business first! I just checked Delta's website for prices, 6 weeks in advance, and I'm seeing early March coming in at the back breaking price of $499.96 for cattle class.

Upgrading to Delta Comfort: $1,428.96
Delta Business class: $2,518.06.

Theory: professor flew business class, his wife flew cattle class. She should be...pissed off. At least he got the opportunity drink good bourbon (Woodford Reserve) if he took Delta.

American has slightly higher prices, and United has slightly lower prices. All have European code share partners. Tho interestingly enough, United didn't appear to have any direct flights, routing one thru Montreal.

The dates I picked was departure 7 March 2017, return 21 March 2017. I wouldn't sit on plane for 18 hours (both way) for a 3, 4 or 5 day trip.

Addendum: Tufts is outside of Boston, so my route was BOS->CDG. And I picked Tuesday as mid-week flights tend to be a bit less expensive. Prices also vary based upon the day of the week you make your reservation.

Bah... be sure to note, as we are all now distracted by the novelty of air travel, that the example sucks for the purpose of impugning the idea of making things in the USA.
This is not manufacturing. It's a travel reg.

Oh, yeah - didn't the adult who just ran for office run off the entire White House travel staff at one time? Gee, good thing she wasn't, um, "a deranged boor whose own staff doesn't trust him to rein in his impulsivity enough to let him control his own Twitter account" or "a spoiled 6-year-old". We all know how Twitter hurts people.

What would you suggest Detroit do?

All I know is that I do everything in my power to avoid flying US carriers. The customer service is awful. My favorite airlines are the Middle Eastern carriers--Emirates and Qatar and Turkish.

Yes, I know they are subsidized. Still, if I'm going to fly across an ocean, I'll won't pick a US carrier. Cost has nothing to do with it.

"$2,500 to Paris?"

Well, here's the way it goes for me when I'm on government travel. As Isab says, the DoD enforces the buy-American regs, but I don't think that's very much of the problem. Here's the problem: Let's say I know that I will be going to San Diego in March. If it's a personal trip, I go ahead and book, and I probably get a good fare ($400 or so) with decently priced upgrade options. However, if I am traveling as a contractor for the U.S. government, I must first submit paperwork to get permission to book the trip, and demonstrate that I have budget and a charge number for it. However, because accounts are constantly being manipulated, I won't get authorization to book the trip until maybe five days prior to departure day. By then, a non-refundable coach ticket will be well north of $1000. I might even have to depart a day early, or return a day late, in order to get flights. And I'll have a hard time finding a hotel room anywhere near the work site; I'll probably have to stay somewhere that's 20-30 miles away, and even that will be at the top of the authorized per diem rate. It will wind up costing 3-4X what it would have cost if I were booking it as personal travel. That's the way it works in the government world.

Is this something Trump can or will fix? In the short term, very doubtful. Perhaps he can start some kind of procurement reform movement that will show results a decade from now. But I've been hearing people say the words "procurement reform" since the late 1980s, across Democrat and Republican administrations, and I have yet to see it happen.

Either you are willing to pay people a living wage or you are not. No talking about how evil our ancestors were for owning slaves if you are not.

Some costs are hidden.