Federal Manager's Daily Report

The Department of Defense needs to control its use of premium

class air travel, which bank records show to have cost $124

million for 68,000 tickets in fiscal years 2001 and 2002, the

General Accounting Office says.

It said civilian supervisors, managers, executives and senior

military officers accounted for almost 50 percent of the

premium class transactions, and comprised 27 of the 28 most

frequent premium class travelers

GAO considers travel by high-ranking officials to be highly

susceptible to abuse and cited breakdowns in DoD’s internal

controls resulting in the unauthorized or unjustified upgrades.

It faulted the department for failing to issue travel policies

consistent with General Services Administration government

wide travel regulations, and for failing to require military

services to issue and update premium class policies to

implement DOD’s travel regulations consistently. Nor did DOD

issue guidance on how to document the authorization and

documentation of premium class travel said GAO. Get Document