The General Services Administration has awarded $1.1 billion in contracts to eight U.S. carriers to provide air passenger transportation services to federal government travelers for fiscal year 2022 under GSA’s City Pair Program.
The FY 2022 City Pair Program awardees are Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Silver Airways, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines, GSA said Tuesday.
“As official government travel resumes on a larger scale, GSA’s City Pair Program helps agencies meet their missions while saving taxpayer money,” said Sonny Hashmi, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at GSA and a 2021 Wash100 Award winner.
“For more than 40 years, the City Pair Program has leveraged the government’s buying power to provide significant savings for federal agency travel,” Hashmi added.
Launched in 1980, the City Pair Program offers the federal government a nearly 50 percent discount on comparable commercial fares for official travel and provides agencies flexibility in booking air travel. The program, which only covered 11 markets during its launch, has now expanded to over 12,600 line item markets.
GSA said City Pair fares for FY 2022 are effective Oct. 1 and are estimated to generate $106 million in FY 2022 savings. For the upcoming fiscal year, 92.4 percent of awards made across 11,669 markets come with two discounted fares. Average domestic fares awarded will drop from $216 in FY 2021 to $209 in FY 2022, while average fares for international travel will be $746 in FY 2022, up from $740 in FY 2021.
The agency noted that it considers the availability of nonstop service, flight availability, total number of flights, price of service and average elapsed flight time as factors when awarding contracts to airlines through the City Pair program.
