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