November 8, 1996
                                                  


                             GSBCA 13653-TRAV


                       In the Matter of LINDA CONEY


     Linda Coney, APO Area Pacific, Claimant.

     William E. Allan, Chief, Finance and Accounting Liaison
Office, Directorate of Support Services, Defense Finance and
Accounting Service, Denver Center, Denver, CO, appearing for
Department of Defense.

DANIELS, Board Judge (Chairman).

     This claim poses the question of who should pay for travel
expenses which were reasonably incurred as a result of the
Government's administrative error.  We conclude that the
responsibility is the Government's.

     The Department of the Air Force authorized Monique Coney to
travel from Atlanta, Georgia through Tokyo to Misawa, Japan, and
return.  Monique is the dependent daughter of Linda Coney, a
civilian employee of the agency located in Misawa, Japan.  At the
time, Monique was an eighteen-year-old student at Spelman College
in Atlanta; she planned to spend the summer with her parents.

     Monique's travel orders provided that a Government passenger
reservation office would make her travel arrangements.  A sergeant
at an agency travel management office in Japan told Linda Coney
that he would purchase an Atlanta-to-Tokyo ticket for Monique on
Delta Airlines and have the ticket waiting for her at the airline
ticket counter at the Atlanta airport on the day travel was
scheduled.  Ms. Coney reasonably interpreted this instruction by
instructing Monique to pick up the ticket at the Delta counter.

     On the appointed day, Monique checked out of her college
dormitory and went to the Atlanta airport.  Delta Airlines informed
her that it had no ticket from Atlanta to Tokyo for her.  Monique
called her mother for advice as to how to proceed.  Ms. Coney in
turn called her local travel management office, but it was late on
a Saturday night in Japan and no one was available at the office.

     Ms. Coney knew that Monique no longer had a home in Atlanta to
which she might return.  Arrangements had been made for a driver to
meet Monique at the Tokyo airport and take her to a hotel where she
would spend the night before flying on to Misawa.  Ms. Coney was
additionally concerned that changing these arrangements would be
extremely difficult.  She consequently purchased, at her own
expense, and at a standard commercial rate because no seats were
available at a military rate, a ticket for Monique on the Atlanta-
to-Tokyo flight originally planned.

     Ms. Coney asked the Air Force to reimburse her for the cost of
this ticket, as well as other expenses she incurred because
Monique's ticket was not available at the Delta Airlines counter at
the Atlanta airport -- charges for telephone calls regarding this
matter, and the cost of engaging a courier service to deliver to
Monique in Tokyo the ticket for the Tokyo-to-Misawa portion of her
trip.  The agency paid Ms. Coney only the cost of the ticket at the
rate it expected to pay.  Ms. Coney now claims the difference.

     Whether the Air Force ever purchased a ticket for Monique is
not clear from the record.  One agency memorandum states that the
ticket was supposed to be waiting at the Delta Airlines ticket
counter at the Atlanta airport.  Two other memoranda say that the
ticket was supposed to be at the United Airlines counter at the
airport.  These memoranda say additionally, however, that the
office which was to have dealt with the airlines "cannot verify
unused ticket location."

     In denying the claim, the Air Force believes that subparagraph
C5100.C of volume 2 of the Joint Travel Regulations is controlling. 
Paragraph C5100 is entitled "Computing Reimbursement for Use of
Mode or Route Other than Authorized."  Subparagraph C, which we
agree is pivotal here, reads as follows:

     Government Transportation and Government-Procured
     Transportation Not Available.  When Government
     transportation and Government procured transportation are
     not available, . . . reimbursement for the cost of
     transportation used may not exceed the least costly
     available scheduled commercial air service over the
     direct route between the origin and destination.

     Under this regulation, to prevail in her claim, Ms. Coney must
show that Government transportation and Government procured
transportation were not available, and that the amount she seeks
represents the least costly available scheduled commercial air
service over the direct route between Atlanta and Tokyo.  We
conclude that Ms. Coney has shown both.  

     The Air Force does not contend that Government transportation
was available.  The actions of the agency's travel management
office rendered Government procured transportation unavailable as
well.  The ticket was not waiting for Monique at the Atlanta
airport, as promised.  It was not at the Delta counter, where any
reasonable person would have expected to find it, based on the
information the office gave Ms. Coney.  Most likely, it was never
purchased at all; if it had been, Delta would have had a record of
the reservation.  In the unlikely event that it was purchased and
left at the United counter, it was still effectively unavailable to
Monique; in the absence of specific instructions, no one would
envision the ticket being there, and the travel office did not give
the Coneys such instructions.  On the day in question, Ms. Coney
faced a difficult situation: her teen-aged daughter was half a
world away and no longer had a residence there; agency travel
personnel were inaccessible, and would be for many hours afterward;
and rearranging the young lady's travel plans from overseas would
have been a complex task.  In these circumstances, Ms. Coney's
decision to spend her own money to get Monique on the planned
flight was extremely prudent.

     Although lower fares were available on the Atlanta-to-Tokyo
route, if inquiry were made at other times and through official
Government means, the Air Force has not suggested that at the time
Ms. Coney purchased the ticket, she paid anything other than the
least costly fare available to her.  The cause of her having to pay
this fare, rather than having her daughter use lower-cost
Government-procured transportation, was the administrative error of
the agency's travel management office.  The costs of telephone
calls involved in this transaction, and of a courier to get the
ticket for the Tokyo-to-Misawa leg of the trip to Monique, would
similarly not have been incurred but for the travel office's
mistake.  These costs are therefore reimbursable as miscellaneous
expenditures which were necessarily incurred in connection with the
travel.  41 CFR 301-9.1(e) (1995).  The Government shall
consequently reimburse Ms. Coney for the entire cost of the ticket
she purchased for the flight from Atlanta to Tokyo (less the amount
already paid), plus the expenses associated with the telephone
calls and courier service.





                                   _________________________
                                   STEPHEN M. DANIELS
                                   Board Judge