Frequent Flyer Kickbacks

September 12th, 2015
ethics, travel
A: I'm looking to place an order for my company. What's your rate?

B: We charge $X.

A: That's a little high; can you do better?

B: What if I throw in a little something extra, just for you?

A: Oh?

B: Say I give you 1%. Maybe take yourself a little vacation?
This is clearly corrupt. Person A is negotiating on behalf of their company, so any discounts person B offers should be to A's company not directly to A. Yes, A is the decision maker, but they need to be choosing based on what their company needs, not what kickbacks they'll get.

This is exactly what frequent flyer miles are. A business traveler buys a ticket with company money, and the airline passes back a little "thank you" bribe to the traveler for choosing them. Why do we allow this?

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

“We should be more ambitious with the software we build”

Since early this year, Michael Malis (of pgrust) has been showing me interesting things he's done and saying [W]e should be more ambitious1 with the software we build There is, understandably, a lot of skepticism about projects like pgrust because there…

via Posts on October 24, 2026

The DBT guide to intense negative emotions

This is a guide for handling intense negative emotions, based on dialectical behavior therapy.

via Thing of Things October 23, 2026

Was the HuggingFace hacking incident scheming?

In July 2026, internal OpenAI agents hacked HuggingFace (HF) in order to figure out how their evaluation grader works. This involved a thousand agents coordinating on an improvised message board to carry out an elaborate sequence of exploits. A later grou…

via Victoria Krakovna October 18, 2026

more     (via openring)