[disneysteve]

As I posted in another thread, I have mixed feelings about this. I don't think the numbers are as dramatic as the media would lead you to believe.

How many people actually went on this trip? I'm sure it wasn't just the CEO. It was probably him and bunch of his other top execs and support staff. Let's say there were 10 of them. Flying commercial can be reasonably priced when tickets are purchased weeks in advance, but this was a last minute arrangement so they probably would have paid top dollar. That $288 fare would probably have been more like $500 or higher, so if 10 people went, that's $5,000 right there.

Have you flown lately? If you have to be at your destination at a certain time for an important meeting, you had better be flying the day before to account for the almost certain delays and cancellations that might occur. That means those 10 people would have needed hotel rooms for a night. Five hotel rooms at $200/night (no such thing as a cheap hotel room in D.C.) would add another $1,000 to the total. Add in meals and ground transportation and the total for the trip would probably be $7,000 or more. And as noted in the article BA linked, the guys couldn't have done any work while traveling and time is money.

The other point I'd make is that $20,000 is nothing in the big picture. GM is losing over $2 billion/month. Cutting out a $20,000 plane flight (and replacing it with a $7,000 trip) would accomplish absolutely nothing. The company spends that much in a couple of minutes in routine operating costs.

So I agree that the public perception is lousy, but I don't think this is really an issue that matters in the grand scheme of things. Not that I'm trying to defend wasteful spending, but I just don't think this is really as wasteful as it was made out to be.