Strict corporate travel policies may have worked against some companies during the volcanic ash crisis in April, according to one of the world's leading business travel experts.
Ron DiLeo, a former American Express Business Travel (Amex BT) boss who recently became executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, told ABTN that travel managers could have saved their companies money if they had exercised more common sense.
He said travellers forced to travel economy because of policy could have found cheaper alternatives in premium classes as passenger loads fluctuated during the chaotic aftermath of the airspace lockdown.
"Travel managers on both sides of the Atlantic had travel policies that didn't allow you to go business class and it was inadvertently costing them money," he said.
"A couple of clients from my previous life who were trying to get travellers home, could have got travellers into the limited space in business class, but their policies dictated that they had to stay in economy, which meant they often had to spend twice as much as the business class fare.
"Policy should not be the end-game, it is a set of parameters that you need to understand how to use in order to be effective."
DiLeo said the crisis was a "wake up call" for many travel managers in terms of how a travel policy can be flexible in times of crisis.
"[In the future] they'll be looking at things differently. That might be one of the benefits from an otherwise awful situation."
DiLeo, who spent more than two decades at Rosenbluth International before joining Amex BT also praised the airlines for their resilience over the last few months.
"We saw everybody [in the industry] being human and just doing the best they could.
"But the airlines where just amazing and showed great stamina, how they managed themselves through it all financially is just...I mean I don't know of any other industry who has do deal with what we deal with in our business."
The Association of Corporate Travel Executives global education conference takes place in Berlin on October 3 - 5. Click here for more info.