CBS Colorado reports not one, not two, but nine executives from Denver Airport flew to Madrid, Spain for a conference, all buying business class tickets with United Airlines at a cost of up to $19,000 per ticket. Is this a proper use of taxpayer funds?
Denver Airport Executives Live High On the Hog: Buy $19K Business Class Tickets For “Conference” In Spain
CBS Colorado caught up with Denver Airport CEO Phil Washington, who justified his own attendance, plus eight staff members, at the Passenger Terminal Expo conference on April 8-9, 2025 in Madrid, explaining that the savings that will be implemented as a result of the conference will more than offset the pricey airline tickets (he provided no specifics).
Why such expensive business class tickets?
“Our travel agent booked it that way because the policy allowed it.”
Washington also emphasized that his team had to get off the plane and work:
“You gotta hit the ground running. You literally go from the plane to a meeting or a conference or whatever. So for this reason, this is allowed in our travel policy and we did it.”
But CBS found that every one of Denver Airport executives landed on April 7th in the morning and the conference did not start until April 8th (so much for hitting the ground running…). Then they flew back on Friday April 11th, the day after the conference ended.
Except for Chief of Staff Maria Meleandez. She spent another two weeks in Europe before flying home…in business class. That violated the Airport’s travel policy, which allows no more than two days to be tacked onto a work trip preiseely to discourage taxpayer money to be used to position officials to take personal vacations.
All told, Devner Airport spent more than $165.000 for this trip…now Washington says the Airport will “review the policies” going far.
I appreciate this exposé…it’s local journalism at its finest.
The Scam Of Conferences
Everyone loves business trips because it’s a way fly in luxury using other people’s money…it a sham. These folks arrived the day before the conference and left the day after, on a Friday, with two days off upon arrival. There was absolutely no valid reason for them to fly in business class when using taxpayer dollars, particularly when tickets cost that much.
Folks, I don’t know whether the executives at DIA are Democrats or Republicans (the positions are non-partisan) and goodness knows I saw a lot of travel waste on both sides of the aisle when I worked on Capitol Hill.
Even so, this plays right into the “drain the swamp” mantra that helped shape the 2024 race the way it did. It may be that the cure is worse than the disease (time will tell), but this sort of thing is what drives folks to say F-it and vote for radical change.
Government officials should not be buying full-fare business class tickets on the taxpayer dime…full stop. Private corporations can treat their employees as they want, and of course, arriving well-rested is a benefit. But for a public entity like Denver Airport, it’s a really bad look and we all know that any “fact-finding” trip that would justify $165K in savings does not pass the smell test…
CONCLUSION
Conferences should not be taxpayer-funded vacations for public officials who live high on the hog with your money. It’s disgusting…maybe the Denver Airport should reach out to me and let me book their travel. I mean, come you idiots, an airport as large as Denver must rack up hundreds of thousands and likely millions of credit card points per month with basic expenses. Everyone of those United tickets could have been purchased with points.
But you can bet that Washington and his staff all love their 1K or Global Services status from a United hub airport and will do anything they can to ensure that continues…”because the travel rules allow it.”
Is my burst of populism reasonable or should taxpayers ensure that public executives are “well-rested” when they fly?
image: United Airlines
It’s justified if they were listening to ” A España tengo que ir…” The unofficial version continues” a pisar cucarachas tengo que ir…”
I see OMAAT wrote about this too while I was doing so.
In that case I won’t have to read it on OMAAT but I did see this story in my Apple News feed and in a nut shell the DIA CEO is a schmuck.
I knew I recognized that name…Phil Washington was considered for head of FAA back in 2021 by Biden. Nomination ended up being withdrawn because he didn’t have enough support for confirmation
Apparently he was under investigation for doing some shady stuff in his last position in Los Angeles.
I wouldn’t care if they flew business on a fare of less than $5K. That’s not uncommon for travel like this, but it’s pretty evident most of them flew LH in F through MUC. Just check the fares. Amazing how shamelessly the CEO (or whoever) talked about it. Considering how poorly DEN has been run, they should have flown basic economy.
It’s even worse. If you watch the CBS clip you’ll see they just flew in United Polaris.
Gotta rack up those miles for personal trips.
Polaris?! I mean, Polaris is great, especially out of DEN, but if I’m given carte Blanche to get to Madrid, I’m getting on SQ Suites, and also routing through FRA at some point for the FCT. Surely that can be done for less than 19K. Come on!!!
I think these guys just wanted to earn a ton of EQPs and RDMs…
They must have bought 2 fully refundable one way tickets, than purchased their own $3000 RT ticket and got a refund on the OW tickets and pocketed $16k
LOL, I was thinking the exact same thing…
Sheisty.
It does say the tickets were booked through the corporate travel agent, so, in addition to being morally dubious, it appears they’re also not very clever.
I have a hard time caring about this when the president is playing golf every day at a club he owns and charges the taxpayers for it, not only getting free golf, but pocketing the expenses.
Score one for the little guy
@Billy Bob: These are not little guys…they are the “swamp” responsible for helping Trump win. But I’m with you 100% on the absurd emoluments violations by Trump, though.
Oh please. Anyone who doesn’t think government employees haven’t flown first or business class for decades is a moron. I can’t believe how many I’ve met and sat with. They can gig the fares, keep their miles and even bring their families with them. Not that hard.
Do you really think any bureaucracy has their citizens best interesst at heart?
BTW BB- at least our President is playing golf. The last one was a corpse lying on a beach in Delaware. Did you ever wake him up?
I’d rather have a corpse run the country than the garbage we have now.
I’m not defending Trump playing golf, especially when he constantly (and quite hypocritically) complained about Obama doing the same thing, but I’m with you here. Just because Trump is bad, doesn’t make this action any less serious. It’s pathetic and these “public servants” should fly in coach.
Lower the travel policy to Economy and you’ll magically go from $19k airfare to $1k and down from 9 people going to 3 ($170k to $3k). Having been in this business a long time it’s the single hardest thing to change as it requires someone making a decision that either negatively impacts them or impacts those beneath them (Sort of like Congress voting to reduce their own benefits…)
@Mark: And I think as part of that reform you could even say that you go a day earlier to fully recover before the event…
Maybe the best bet is to assign a $2K travel stipend to each traveler and see how they spend what essentilaly becomes their own money…
I’m not even sure I know how to buy a ticket to Spain for $19k
Even last minute, that’s absurd
I bet these fools, especially the $19K, thought that he was being really clever requalifying for 1K in one trip and did it deliberately because he knew he could get away with it.
This is an example of people using very poor judgement and is more than likely the tip of the iceberg. To point a finger at the travel agent and saying it is allowed by the policy is a very weak defense and reaks of arrogance and ignorance. Money could have been spent on more security and cameras in the parking facilities to help protect the vehicles. Money should be paid back. People should be terminated. Do the right thing
@Lou: Excellent point about break-ins in the parking structures.
Sorry, but how exactly is it taxpayer funds? I work for a major airport and our biggest revenue category is parking. And then there’s landing fees, rents for airline and other tenants (food and beverage, airline lounges, car rental agencies, etc). I don’t think this was a taxpayer-funded trip.
Yeah, because there’s a free market and the punters are choosing your airport over numerous other options in the same town.
Happy that they were called out. Be embarrassed. They deserve it.
So just for grins I checked United.com for DEN-MAD in business class departing on SUN – 5/10 and returning FRI – 5/16 which mimics the itinerary used by the DIA team and found the cost to be $10,566 for fully refundable tickets! As a former UA employee I would be shocked to find out that the DIA team couldn’t get a significant discount off that published fare. Bottom line — either incompetence or corrupt boondoggle!
What about hotel accomodation… maybe a 20.000 usd for presidential suite helping
Lifetime status…
There is something really off with all of this. $19K for a J ticket to MAD from DEN is not even possible. I mean, really…what is the actual story behind this? Either this supposed travel planner has some angle they are working or the whole thing is made up. I don’t think I could ever spend that on a J ticket, in Polaris no less, if I tried to. Completely bizarre. It’s as if the travel planner tried to find the craziest most expensive fare possible and no one even bothered to question it. There is more to this story…
I had tried to post a comment on this but it somehow didn’t make it.
I have read hundreds of those policies and even authored a few, including in public sector organisations. My view is that the ‘they should fly in coach’ angle is unproductive and indeed can annoy staff and incentivise malicious compliance through the purchase of absurdly expensive full-Y fares.
On the contrary, being totally agnostic about the class of service (or even means of transport- the last expenses policy I wrote mentions ‘overnight luxury coach services’ covering the flat-bed buses in Mexico, Thailand etc) should work a lot better as long as it comes with an explicit expectation on employees to consider the options available to them nd managers to review and sense-check expenses claims. I don’t see why an employer should prevent someone from e.g. taking an additional connection on a business class deal instead of paying more for a direct flight because some desk jockey decided that their seniority level only warrants travel in premium economy. I’m on a personal trip and have just purchased a €47 upgrade for a 2.5 hour flight- I know of employers who would never approve of that as a business expense whilst they’d obviously reimburse staff for the cost of the Y ticket and gladly cover the €55 incidental cost of checking in a second piece of luggage which the upgrade includes.
The point is that employees who are paid for making judgment calls on their day jobs should be trusted to make appropriate decisions when it comes to their travel plans and be held accountable for those decisions. When you take that discretion away, you provide an incentive for staff to game the system.
Despite my religious beliefs to the contrary, I kinda wish there is an afterlife in which you get judged. Fifteen thousand taxpayers dollar for a J flight: a month in he’ll. BTW, in my world, urinating on a public toilet seat is two months.
I’m curious to know where the first class flight fit into this. It couldn’t have all been in Polaris, obviously. Did they sneak in an LH F leg somewhere in the itinerary?
I got the impression that all the flights were on UA, so it must’ve been their optimistically named front cabin on a domestic connection.