GAO urges Congress to let employees keep frequent flier miles

Prohibiting federal employees from keeping frequent flier miles earned on official travel is more trouble than it's worth, according to a new General Accounting office report. Frequent flier miles are generally considered the property of agencies, not individual travelers, and using them for personal travel is, for the most part, illegal. But, most agencies don't collect and use employees' frequent flier miles because of the administrative burden in doing so, according to John Anderson, managing director for physical infrastructure issues at GAO. GAO prepared the special report for Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind. In it, GAO reviewed federal laws and regulations, as well as previous decisions by the comptroller general before making a recommendation that the frequent flier prohibition be repealed. GAO found that the policy is too hard to implement because airlines don't want to separate business and personal frequent flier mile accounts for federal employees, and some employees aren't willing to provide their employer with their account statements, which detail personal, as well as business, travel. "Folks feel that what they do in their personal lives is their personal business," Anderson explained. "There just aren't a lot of employees signing up for these programs and the airlines don't provide the necessary tools to track [the miles]." Moreover, GAO found that while the government has saved more than $2 billion a year on contract airfares, millions of frequent flyer miles earned on official travel are not being used. "Here's a potential benefit that could be of very little cost to the federal government, if any," Anderson said. GAO recommended that Burton introduce legislation to allow federal workers to keep the frequent flier miles they earn, and that it be retroactive, so miles earned up until now can be used. Late last month, Burton's spokesman said such legislation was being drafted.

The measure has already gained the support of the Bush administration, which added language in the fiscal 2002 defense authorization bill repealing restrictions on the personal use of frequent flier miles for both military and civilian employees.

"It applies to everybody and I think that they were smart in that regard," Anderson said. "If they had just tried to apply it to their employees, I think they would have met with some resistance."