This makes even Wayne LePew look like a piker
Extract from an article in today's WSJ:
Quote:
By Brody Mullins
June 6, 2019 8:51 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON—One Saturday morning last month, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and Chief Executive Thomas Donohue arrived in Greece with his girlfriend and another couple after an overnight flight on a Gulfstream jet provided by the chief advocacy group for American corporations.
After a week sailing in the Greek islands, Mr. Donohue continued on the jet to Tokyo and Beijing for three days of business meetings before returning on it to Washington. The total cost? At least $600,000, according to estimates by four private-jet-service companies.
The Chamber disputed those estimates but declined to provide the trip’s actual cost, saying it negotiates flight rates and gets a volume discount.
It is an unusual perk granted to Mr. Donohue: the use of a corporate jet service for personal and business trips. The Chamber pays for all of Mr. Donohue’s business trips. But the group also picks up nearly all the costs when Mr. Donohue is flying on vacation.
For some personal flights, Mr. Donohue reimburses the Chamber a heavily discounted fare, according to the Chamber’s rules. Other times, the Chamber covers the full cost; in those instances, Mr. Donohue is required to pay income tax on the value of the flight. But Internal Revenue Service rules often allow travelers to report a far lower value for the flight than the true market cost.
Around the World
CEO Thomas Donohue's trip last month on a corporate jet provided by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce included both business and personal travel, including a week of sailing in the Greek islands.
That arrangement makes the Chamber an outlier among major Washington trade associations, which are funded by donations from member corporations or entities. No other chief enjoys the same perk, according to a Wall Street Journal review of the 35 largest associations, as measured by annual revenue.
Even the use of private jets for business trips is rare among these groups’ executives: Only three of the other large trade organizations allow it, and two of those say they haven’t done so in years. The only other association that has used a jet service recently is the National Business Aviation Association, which represents the corporate-plane industry. Its travel policy says its president can use private planes on rare occasions if there is “no commercial airline service to a destination or commercial airline service does not meet the time commitments” of the trip.
