As someone who has worked for 15 years at a German technology multinational that is somewhat smaller than Siemens (about 50,000 employees worldwide) but culturally similar (down to the fact that we had a CEO who came from Siemens, ushered the company that was still revelling in its 19th and 20th century glory fast-forward into the 21st century and brought quite a few executives with him from Siemens), I have seen my fair share of corporate travel policies, and I suspect that the newspaper story is plain bullocks, or that the local Siemens executive was dreaming about what he'd do if he were king.
We don't typically use LoCos, but, as someone pointed out, if they happen to fly from A to B and no legacy carrier happens to serve that route, we are not forbidden to do so.
The only safety-related action I ever saw was after 9/11, and even that was evident only to an avid observer: we used to have a pretty good contract with United and were required to use them on flights to North America unless it resulted in really absurd routings. After 9/11, management felt it was not wise to force people to fly on N-registered planes, so the rule was no longer enforced, but there wasn't even an internal memo to all employees about it, and the contract eventually expired due to lack of volume.
We also used to have an on-site travel agency at headquarters that was staffed by company employed travel agents. Like all good travel agents in the good old days, these folks had a fair amount of travelling experience of their own, owed to a decent salary, a IATA discount card and also some company sponsored travel to IATA meetings.
These days, we use a large travel agency that specializes in corporate travel and operates a large office and call center in Frankfurt. Unfortunately, those guys are pretty clueless about the geography and quirks of American and Asian hubs and about discounts that airlines offer on certain routings or days, and they will gladly try to book you on a MUC-CDG-NCL or FRA-INC-NRT routing if it appears slightly cheaper than the negotiated rate with LH, even if this makes no sense whatsoever when you consider total travel time, risk of delays and the track record of the carriers involved. The way I usually deal with them is that I select my routing, airline and travel days based on my own experience, and when as usual I am not happy with their suggestion, I simply email them the rate I researched on the internet, and they are happy to book it for me.
Last edited by BRE; 29th Sep 2012 at 05:43.