Important Travel Restrictions

(If you have not been offered travel reimbursment from us you can ignore the following.)

A major part of our funding comes from the United States National Science Foundation. For these funds, there are restrictions for travel that we must follow:

"Any air transportation to, from, between, or within a country other than the U.S. of persons or property, the expense of which will be assisted by NSF funding, must be performed by or under a code-sharing arrangement with a U.S.-flag air carrier if service provided by such a carrier is available. Tickets (or documentation for electronic tickets) must identify the U.S. flag air carrier's designator code and flight number."

Both Air France and Alitalia are partners of Delta Airlines and operate flights to Atlanta which are code-shared. But it is important that the ticket is bought from Delta.

Your travel agent may, with the best of intentions, attempt to persuade you that because the flight is code-shared it doesn't matter which company you buy the ticket from: for example, KLM or British Airways or Air France, especially because these are generally less expensive. But for NSF it does matter. If you buy a ticket from Lufthansa, for example, the flight numbers will be preceded by the code "LH" and we cannot reimburse this. The flight numbers must have the code from the U.S. airline (e.g., "UA" for United Airlines, "DL" for Delta, "TW" for TWA, etc.). Then it doesn't matter to whom the actual airplane belongs.

There are a few exceptions, such as if there is no U.S. airline that flies out of your home city. In which case, the NSF says: "...a foreign-flag air carrier shall be used only to the nearest interchange point on a usually traveled route to connect with a U.S. flag air carrier."

You must arrive and leave the United States on a U.S. airline ticketed-flight.

Department of Mathematics Franklin College of Arts and Sciences The University of Georgia