Long ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...when I worked for Boeing (and it
really wasn't that long ago) we had to take 15 employees (2 managers and
the rest engineers) on a trip to meet customers. Our in-house travel
agency couldn't figure out what was going on, since we had to change
the dates repeatedly over the 2 month period. I finally took over
all the planning (logistics - no big deal, I ran it as if it was an
engineering project!)

On a lark, I called Seattle and asked about "borrowing" one of the
jets that the Executives use. Turns out that yes, we could make
arrangements and use it at the same billed cost as the execs. The
overall cost would have been 50% *cheaper* than flying commercial.
Why? Because due to the changing schedule, we had to pay full-fare in
order to mitigate changing the flights.

For some strange reason, my boss was *not* surprised I did this, but
would not take it to our director (just under the VP level).

Bummer.