WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- A U.S. government audit released Wednesday said federal workers overspent $146 million last year on business-class air travel.
The Government Accountability Office report examined 53,000 premium-class tickets purchased in the 12 months ending in June 2006 at a cost of more than $230 million, The New York Times reported.
That sample was less than 1 percent of all employee flights but represented nearly 7 percent of the money spent on air travel because a business-class ticket costs on average five times that of a coach ticket, the report said.
The audit outlined one Agriculture Department employee who could have spent less than $9,000 on economy tickets for 10 trips to Europe for trade negotiations, but instead spent $62,000 on business-class fares, the audit said.
Gregory Kutz, the GAO official who oversaw the audit told the Times such employees should be disciplined.
"Some of these people have individually wasted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars," he said. "But no one, as far as I am aware, has ever had to repay one dollar or administratively be reprimanded for their actions."
