On NIH/NSF grants, who controls the frequent flyer miles?

Frequent miles earned while traveling on a NIH funded grant belong to the PI not to department or head of Department. Because the PI wrote the grant and if funded, one of the objective of the research is to disseminate the results of the research.PI's travel is related to objectives of the grant. Therefore, the department has no claim to frequent flier miles by the PI.
Mr. PI, stay your ground. Thanks and good luck.

I heard on multiple occasions that miles belong to the PI and are his to keep. I am not aware of any existing mechanism to transfer miles to any other person/entity if the ticket is paid by the PI's credit card, which is typically the case (and reimbursed from the grant after the travel). The real question, therefore, may be: can PI use these miles only for the business-related travel, or for any personal travel? The latter is, actually, the rule at my organization.

Is flying a real requirement to do science nowadays?. on 15 years of life sciences background I am sitting at a Starbucks Coffe somewhere in middle east and follow all my field on-line. However, if I have to fly to present my work somewhere in the world as a requirement It should be paid by the grant. The accumulated miles are public property my coworker or the PI can have them.

Irrelevant but a more important question. What will happen to the peer-review system in 2014 when most of the diseases are decoded on genes and global diagnosis functions on databases. Can any PI follow up that?. Where will the classical grants fit into that picture?. Any preparation for that? Don't say that it is miles away. The PIs should consider this rather than the accumulated miles.

The NIH and NSF send their many staffers on trips worth hundreds of thousands or millions of air miles per year. All paid by funds originating from taxpayers. Who gets the fregquent flyer miles from all this NIH/NSF etc staff travel? Or did they negotiate a big bulk purchase with airlines in which they got lower ticket prices in return for not receiving any FF miles?

First consult the specific airline's policies, as they vary; often the miles are nontransferable.

As to institution policies, they vary, but remember that there is no extra charge for the miles,they are built into the fee structure, and one can accept them or discard them by not participating. The real question for the institution which does not want people traveling needlessly in order to accumulate FF miles is "What business travel is reasonable?". Regulating use of FF miles is an inaccurate indirect means when there are better tools for this.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002 (P.L.107-107) was signed into law by the President on December 28, 2001. Section 1116 of the legislation repealed Section 6008 of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994. As a consequence, Federal employees and military personnel are allowed to retain and make personal use of promotional items, such as frequent flyer miles, earned while on official Government travel.


The General Services Administration (GSA) issued guidelines for official Federal travelers using frequent traveler benefits. Federal Travel Advisory Number 5 was issued December 31, 2001 and can be found on GSA's Web site. In addition, GSA has issued two final rule amendments to both the Federal Property Management Regulations and the Federal Travel Regulation to reflect this legislative change. See 67 Federal Register 17649-17650 (April 11, 2002) and 67 Federal Register 17946-17947 (April 12, 2002), respectively.


Likewise the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued Announcement 2002-18, "Frequent Flyer Miles Attributable to Business or Official Travel," which discusses the taxability of frequent flyer miles or other promotional items that are received as the result of business travel and used for personal purposes. The announcement is part of Internal Revenue Bulletin No. 2002-10, March 11, 2002 and is available on the IRS Web site.

The bottom line is the Federal Government gives the nod to the individual, and so should the University!

The scenario makes one wonder how the Chair plans to use the miles that were accumulated by the inquiring PI (and to a lesser extent just how much the PI in question is traveling).

Some enlightened socialism in the University setting can be of some value, but if the employee is having to float a loan to the grant by using their own credit card to pre-pay and wait on reimbursement of all the expenses it is fairly reasonable (and obviously legal) that they should control usage of the FF miles. At the most cynical, though, one wonders if the Chair just wants to steal a subsidy to their own travel.