How are you handling airline ancillery fees?

[DebbiL]

Hello, we are reviewing our travel policy and in doing so we have a question for the group. How do you handle air travel seat upgrades and early boarding fees? Do you allow employees to expense them as ancillery airline fee or some other expense type?

Thank you for any information that is provided.

Debbi

[RichardG]

Hi Debbi,

The only ancillary fees we face in relation to flights are baggage and exit seat fees.  Exit row seating is allowed at the discretion of the travel approver and is paid as part of the fare - so it gets charged to Domestic Airfares. Likewise additional baggage should be included as part of the booked fare price, however for some low cost airlines the payment is required at the desk and again is charged to Domestic Airfares - we ask staff to add a comment if charged separately to the fare when acquitting.

Kind regards

[DebbiL]

Thank you.

[MGordon]

We don't allow for seat upgrades, but do pay for early boarding fees for southwest.  We have an expense type in Concur for Airline Fees and require them to select a Fee Type (Airline Club, baggage, Onboard Entertainment, Priority Access, Seats, Ticket change Fee, upgrade, other).  It doesn't mean we pay for all of these, but it gives up insight as to what the fees are for so that it can be evaluated.

[DavidW]

We also do WiFi charges too.

For us, we use an expense type: "Airline - Misc" where in the comments field they put it what it is for. If we get enough of one type (e.g. seat upgrades), we review it.

For Southwest, we see "business select" upgrades from time to time.

[JessicaL]

Hello,

We have a category called "Flight Fees" which will prompt the traveler to then select what type of fee it is. The choices we allow are Airline Club, Baggage, On Board, Onboard Entertainment, Other, Priority Access, Seats, Ticket Change Fee, and Upgrade. 

I have never seen anyone submit an expense for Airline Club, but we allow the policy for it because there are bookable meeting rooms in many of the airline clubs.

Hope this helps.