Most Sampled U.S.-Carrier Fares Were Cheaper. Why GAO Still Found an Added Cost.

A majority-cheaper result and an added-cost estimate can both be true

Does the rule requiring federal travelers to use U.S.-flag air service raise costs even when compliant fares are often cheaper? What’s the Scoop With Broach reconstructed the categories in GAO’s October 1 study of State Department travel. Of 1,000 simulated ticket pairs, 708 had a cheaper compliant ticket and 292 had a more expensive one. But only 53 pairs met the three tests GAO used to isolate a direct added cost from the Fly America Act.

The 70.8% cheaper share is our calculation from two groups in the report: 615 pairs with a government contract fare and 93 without one. It describes simulated options constructed for fiscal year 2026 from a sample of prior-year itineraries. It is not a count of tickets actually purchased at those prices, and it does not establish that the law caused the cheaper fares.

The distinction matters to both sides of the policy dispute. The majority-cheaper result does not disprove GAO’s estimated $1.1 million annual added cost. Equally, that cost estimate does not mean every government traveler was forced to buy an expensive ticket. The report measures a narrower, identifiable effect while leaving the larger contract-fare counterfactual unresolved.

How 292 more-expensive comparisons become 53

GAO first excluded 828 ticket pairs for which a General Services Administration contract fare was available. The contract program and the Fly America Act interact in ways that make the law’s separate effect on airline prices difficult to identify. That left 172 pairs without a contract fare.

Among those 172 pairs, 93 compliant tickets were cheaper and 79 were more expensive. State travel officials identified exceptions for 26 of the 79: twenty involved European Union Open Skies arrangements and six involved compliant travel taking at least six additional hours. Subtracting those 26 leaves 53, or 5.3% of the full sample.

The underlying data did not identify every possible exception, including mission needs and travel with pets. GAO explicitly notes the possibility of additional exceptions. The 53-pair result therefore rests on the exceptions that could be assessed with the data used, not a review of every traveler’s circumstances.

The estimate includes time as well as ticket prices

For the 53 pairs, compliant tickets averaged $1,616 compared with $1,153 for the alternative—a $463 fare difference using the rounded figures. GAO then treated travel time as an opportunity cost and valued the difference using the median hourly wage of State Foreign Service employees. Compliant travel was slightly shorter on average in this subset, although the time difference was not statistically significant.

Accounting for time reduced the estimated average added cost to about $455, with a 95% confidence interval of $276 to $634. GAO applied the 5.3% share and that average to the 45,030 relevant tickets State purchased in fiscal year 2025. Recalculating with its more precise $455.03 estimate gives $455.03 × 0.053 × 45,030 = approximately $1.09 million, rounded in the report to $1.1 million. The corresponding range is about $0.7 million to $1.5 million.

The annual amount is an extrapolation, not an invoice total. State officials said fiscal-year 2025 travel was unusually low, including because of the foreign-assistance pause. A different volume of travel could produce a different annual total even if the modeled per-ticket effect stayed the same.

Why the contract fares remain an open question

The 213 contract-fare comparisons with a more expensive compliant option had an average difference of $311. GAO shows that simply extending that difference to annual ticket volume would suggest roughly another $3 million. But it does not establish that amount as a reliable additional saving from repeal.

Without the law, greater competition might lower contract prices. Conversely, U.S. airlines might offer less favorable discounts or fewer contract routes if they no longer expected the same government passenger volume. GAO explains both possibilities. Adding the illustrative $3 million to the direct-cost estimate would conceal that unresolved question.

The law generally requires U.S.-flag service for federally funded air travel, subject to exceptions; compliant service can include a foreign airline operating under a U.S. carrier’s code-share arrangement. Aircraft nationality alone is therefore not enough to classify a ticket.

Method and agency response

We read the full report, reconciled the five mutually exclusive fare categories, recalculated their shares and reproduced the annual-cost arithmetic in Appendix II. GAO selected 600 itineraries from 26,906 authorized fiscal-year 2025 itineraries and constructed 1,000 pairs of prospective options. State pulled the fare data in April 2026 for later travel dates; these are modeled comparisons rather than paired purchases.

State provided technical comments, which GAO says it incorporated where appropriate. This publication did not conduct the study’s interviews, independently collect airline quotes or determine which particular employee should have received an exception. The original contribution is a transparent reconciliation showing how the majority-cheaper result, the narrow direct-cost estimate and the unquantified contract-fare effects fit together.