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Comment by eszed | Hacker News Reader

I slightly mis-read the headline. Here's what's going on:

>Canoo reimburses Aquila Family Ventures, an entity owned by the CEO, for use of an aircraft. In 2023, Canoo spent $1.7 million on this reimbursement.

CEO owns a plane. CEO uses the plane (for business, one presumes). Business reimburses CEO for plane. That looks like a poor use of funds, but not necessarily self-dealing?

I mean, in their position he should probably be flying coach - maybe he's so good that he's totally worth spending seven figures for his travel (though I doubt it) - but it's technically no different than reimbursing any other travel expense.

Better system: they could reimburse the minimum airfare, and he could cover the difference himself. Everyone has that figured out for us peons, when we request a more convenient flight. (Want to bet they imposed that on their employees?)

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> Better system: they could reimburse the minimum airfare, and he could cover the difference himself. Everyone has that figured out for us peons, when we request a more convenient flight. (Want to bet they imposed that on their employees?)

I'd absolutely be willing to bet the deal that regular employees get is worse-than-or-equal-to what you described. Most companies I have worked for do not even let you choose. If you are doing business travel, you use the company's preferred travel agency, and fly on the flight you're given, even if you could independently find a business-class flight just as cheap.

Can you tell me what travel system allows that?

I've had that in academia, and in my current (medium-sized) company, where rules and processes aren't as stringent as I know they are in BigCorps. My partner works for a consultancy firm (where she, in part, arranges travel for various people), and they do that too. I guess I assumed that (very fair-seeming) practice is more widespread than it actually is. My condolences to all of you.

Edit: I just remembered a totally silly travel situation during my academic career. The school sent me to an academic conference in an interesting location, and I wanted to stay for an extra week to do some touristing. (It was during summer vacation, and golly do I miss those.)

No one had any problem with it, and they told me standard practice was for me to call the airline and pay the $250 (or whatever it was) change fee. No problem, until I noticed that tickets with the new return date would be something like $400 less than the original dates. No tickets had yet been purchased, so I suggested that they buy me those dates directly: everyone would win.

Except... "Sorry, we can't do that." Huh? "Travel must be +/- 2 days of the conference dates."

I presented the situation to my department chair, hoping for an intervention, but she sighed, and said that those people were impossible to deal with. "But, it's the end of the fiscal year, and I have some extra budget [somewhere], so submit a reimbursement form for the $250, and I'll sign it."

Silly, right?

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