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FACT CHECK✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
State Department: Fly America Act’s Effects on Travel Costs and Personnel Experience
Filed 1h ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk
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The Path of the Goblin King
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: Shixart1985 · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
A GAO analysis finds the Fly America Act, which requires government-funded travel to use U.S.-flag carriers even when a foreign airline is cheaper, adds an estimated $0.7-$1.5 million annually to State Department travel costs, about 1-2% of its $69 million FY2025 air travel budget.
The Act also complicates urgent travel such as emergency evacuations and funerals, and routine issues like flying with pets, since compliant flights aren't always available on short notice.
State approved exceptions for about 6% of its foreign-destination itineraries in FY2025, most often to cut trip duration or layovers, while rejecting roughly 14% of waiver requests; a cheaper foreign ticket alone does not qualify for a waiver.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
A rule that can't bend for a cheaper fare but somehow finds room to argue about pet carriers has its priorities exactly backwards. It's a small sum as federal budgets go, but it's the kind of small, dumb cost that nobody ever quite gets around to fixing because fixing it would mean admitting the rule was never really about the money. The State Department just eats the difference and calls it policy.
