Report: HHS Secretary's office not using discounted airfares

Employees of the Health and Human Service Department's Office of the Secretary are rarely taking advantage of the cheapest available fare when booking air travel, a recent report from the HHS inspector general found.

HHS employees, like those from other agencies, use the General Services Administration's GovTrip Web portal to book airfare. In fiscal 2006, the period covered in the inspector general's report, the Office of the Secretary spent approximately $4 million on employee travel.

When traveling between certain destinations, federal employees use the city-pair program, through which GSA awards competitive contracts for air travel between popular destinations, known as city-pairs. For many city pairs, two contracts are available: a discounted rate that the report calls the "standard rate" and the cheapest available fare, referred to as the "discounted rate." Both options are fully refundable and do not have advanced purchase requirements, minimum or maximum stay requirements, travel time limits, or blackout periods. The cheapest fares, however, are limited, depending on the airline and destination, making them ideal for travelers who can book early, or who have flexible travel schedules.

In fiscal 2006, 1,521 travelers from the HHS Office of the Secretary made 8,113 one-way trips by air. The inspector general audited the 4,397 trips for which discounted fares were available and found that the office paid $1,712,821 for 3,676 of those trips at standard rate. The office paid just $297,647 for 721 flights at the cheapest available rate.

While travelers from this office used the cheapest available air fares on only 16 percent of the trips for which both standard and discounted fares were available, GSA reported to the IG that 50 percent of travelers governmentwide took advantage of discounted rates in general.

"OS potentially could have saved $180,151 if OS travelers had used discounted fares at the average 50 percent governmentwide utilization rate," the report stated. The IG calculated that the office could have saved as much as $529,857 if it had used the cheapest available whenever possible.

Respondents to the inspector general's survey said they did not fully understand their options under the city-pair fare system and did not know how to identify discounted fares in the GovTrip system. In that system, standard fares are identified as the GSA City-Pair fare and the discounted, or cheapest available rate, is identified as the GSA City-Pair w/Capacity Limits fare.

Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they were unaware that the cheapest available fare was shown as GSA City-Pair w/Capacity Limits. Fifty-five percent said they learned of the designations by taking the survey. Almost the same percentage of respondents said they did not search for the limited cheapest fares when booking their most recent flight.

The IG recommended that the Office of the Secretary further educate their employees on identifying and selecting discounted fares in GovTrip and work with GSA on clarifying how flights and fares are displayed. Spokeswoman Viki Reath said GSA "welcomes the opportunity to work with customer agencies and [E-Gov Travel Service] vendors to enhance the travelers' experience."

Joe Ellis, HHS assistant secretary for administration and management, concurred with the inspector general's recommendations and said the office already is working to improve employee awareness of the cheapest available fares.

"I concur that OS must seek significant improvement from its use of the discounted fares on only 16 percent of their trips, as indicated in your report," Ellis wrote in the agency's formal response.

He said the HHS GovTrip homepage includes a banner alerting travelers to use Capacity Controlled Contract fares and the agency's travel division is working with the GovTrip team to reposition the display of fares and make locating discounted flights easier.