COLUMN ONE : Winging It With Free Air Travel : Countless regulations govern behavior for U.S. officials. But virtually unaddressed is one huge perquisite of public life--flying on government aircraft.

Steven A. White, manager of nuclear power for the Tennessee Valley Authority until early 1989, commuted every week in a government-chartered jet between his Virginia home and the TVA’s headquarters in Tennessee. The cost to the taxpayers: $172,700.

FBI Director William S. Sessions, who travels regularly on a government-owned jet seized from narcotics traffickers, extended one of his business trips in 1989 to enjoy a leisurely day in his hometown of San Antonio. Not until congressional investigators began looking into Sessions’ travel did he decide to reimburse the government for his flight.

Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher occasionally travels to speaking engagements on jets provided by American corporations. But there are no federal regulations requiring Mosbacher to disclose such arrangements, even though he may someday be making decisions affecting the companies involved.

As the stories of White, Sessions and Mosbacher clearly illustrate, White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu--who has been criticized for taking personal trips on military aircraft--is by no means the only high-ranking official who appears to be taking advantage of this patchwork system of policies governing official travel.

While the federal government has written thousands of pages of regulations setting strict operating standards for almost every other aspect of official behavior, one thing that remains virtually unregulated is what may be the biggest perquisite of public life today: free travel by government aircraft.

Although the Office of Management and Budget has set some broad guidelines governing the acquisition and operation of government-owned planes, each agency generally sets its own standards for official travel by high-ranking Administration appointees. As a result, abuses of federally paid travel are believed to be rampant.

Federal documents show that officials often travel on expensive government-owned airplanes to locations served regularly by commercial airlines. Sometimes they do not reimburse the government for the portions designated as personal travel. And there is no guidance available for allowing spouses to accompany officials on such trips.

White House officials said Thursday that regardless of what befalls Sununu personally, the flap over the chief of staff’s travels almost certainly will spur the President to tighten current guidelines. “The President wants to avoid even the appearance of impropriety,” one official says. “We’ve got to demand higher standards.”

The lack of any coherent policy governing high-level travel--and the resulting abuses, as underscored in recent days by the Sununu affair--has brought a growing clamor from Congress for the Administration to tighten its guidelines.

“There is no consistent policy in the executive branch,” complains Rep. Bob Wise (D-W.Va.), who chairs a House Government Operations subcommittee. “There is some flying fast-and-loose out there and it needs to be reined in . . . Our experience is that each agency sets it own policy, and often they don’t even have a real, written policy.”

On Thursday, Rep. Frank Horton (R-N.Y.), a senior Republican on the House Government Operations Committee, called for a broad investigation by the General Accounting Office of the use of airplanes by all senior officials, not just Sununu.

He said he wanted to know “whether the policies are consistent and uniform for both branches, whether they are adequate to prevent abuse” and “whether sufficient enforcement safeguards exist to ensure policy compliance.”

Travel at taxpayer expense is still largely viewed in Washington as a matter of individual preference for Cabinet-level appointees. And most members of Congress are reluctant to make an issue of these abuses since they also are sometimes criticized for using military aircraft to make needless junkets to far-off places.

In fact, just last year, lawmakers loyal to House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) tried to push through legislation that would have given him full-time access to a $19-million military executive jet. The measure was quickly dropped after nationwide press accounts embarrassed the ordinarily frugal Speaker.

Although the General Services Administration has firm regulations governing travel by federal bureaucrats, none of them specifically addresses the unique problems faced by high-level Administration appointees. As a result, most Cabinet-level officials have wide latitude when it comes to deciding how they will travel.

Furthermore, many of the GSA’s general guidelines governing travel by lower-level officials plainly are outdated. GSA regulation FPMRA 40, for example, authorizes officials to claim government reimbursement for “steamer-chairs, steamer-cushions, steamer-rugs and other expenses.”

Sununu’s case is typical of those in which high-level officials have sought to exempt themselves from policies that apply to other government workers.

Although government employees are instructed to rely on commercial airlines whenever possible, most top Administration officials prefer flying on the little-known fleet of more than 1,400 civilian and military aircraft that are available to the White House and most key departments and agencies.

Sununu usually flies on one of 43 planes belonging to the 89th Military Air Wing, which is located at Andrews Air Force Base just outside Washington. The fleet includes the President’s plane, Air Force One. By law, all the rest are available to the vice president, Cabinet members, members of Congress and “other high-ranking dignitaries.”

The Air Force spends an estimated $3,945 an hour to operate the 12-seat C-20 Air Force jet used by Sununu and many other top officials.

Current White House policy, which was last revised during the final years of the Ronald Reagan Administration, permits the chief of staff to use one of these planes if it is necessary for him to remain in voice communication with the President during his trip. But Sununu has consistently used Air Force aircraft, even for purely personal trips.

Unlike Sununu, most high-level Administration officials do not have carte blanche to travel in Air Force planes whenever they please. The Defense Department enforces an unusually rigid official pecking-order that dictates who will be given first call on these planes on any given day.

Even Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who regularly uses Air Force planes for diplomatic missions, cannot always get the plane he wants, and often must take long journeys--sometimes up to 17 hours in the air--in windowless converted cargo planes referred to as “flying coffins.” Some officials have been known to cancel trips rather than fly in these.

Most Cabinet officers use the Air Force planes mainly when they are asked to represent the President at an official occasion, usually in another country. A Times survey of Cabinet members found only one--Energy Secretary James D. Watkins--who admitted using a military aircraft solely for convenience.

“He had to get a lot of places in a short period of time with a lot of people,” a Watkins aide explained.

Other Options

The secretaries of Justice, Transportation, Interior and some other agencies--including the FBI--don’t have to choose solely between military aircraft and commercial travel. They have another option: their departments’ own civilian aircraft that frequently are used by high-level Administration officials.

Sometimes such usage runs contrary to federal policy. The General Accounting Office, an investigating agency of Congress which frequently has investigated the activities of this civilian air force, estimates that these planes are worth more than $2 billion and cost in excess of $750 million annually to operate and maintain.

According to GAO officials, government agencies have been acquiring these planes steadily over the past two decades without performing the cost analysis required by OMB guidelines to show that they are needed. GAO also contends that the government planes frequently are used in cases when it would be cheaper for the official to travel by commercial airliner.

Among the agencies cited by the GAO for violating government regulations on the use of civilian aircraft are the Justice Department, the FBI, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Energy, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Coast Guard, the Forest Service, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Safety Concern

In 1990, for example, the GAO found that Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh and FBI Director Sessions were flying regularly, without exploring less-expensive options, on three FBI-owned aircraft seized from drug traffickers. The Justice Department replied that the arrangements were necessary for safety reasons.

In the year since the GAO made its findings, according to Rep. Wise, the Justice Department still has failed to hammer out a policy that satisfies federal regulations on the use of these planes.

Likewise, Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner regularly flies on jets provided by the FAA and the Coast Guard--both agencies under his department’s control. A pilot himself, Skinner occasionally even takes the controls of an FAA Citation aircraft that has been put at his disposal. But he has never been cited by GAO for violating federal regulations.

One Cabinet official who spurns travel in government-owned, civilian planes is Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan Jr. Even though the Interior Department has a huge fleet of these aircraft, he never takes trips on them because he fears it would generate bad publicity, according to press spokesman Steven Goldstein.

No matter how they fly, all top officials face the same dilemma as Sununu: deciding when they must reimburse the government for trips that are partially personal or political. While Sununu reimbursed the Treasury for four of his personal trips and 24 political trips, he allowed taxpayers to pick up the tab for four skiing trips to Colorado and New Hampshire.

The cases of Thornburgh and Sessions underscore how widely differing those decisions are. Between August, 1988, and July, 1989, Thornburgh reimbursed the government $1,032 for three personal trips he made with family members aboard government aircraft. But Sessions did not reimburse the government for his San Antonio jaunt until the GAO uncovered it.

There is no government-wide policy dictating when the taxpayers will pay for transportation of a spouse who accompanies a public official on a trip. At the Transportation Department, Skinner’s wife is allowed to fly at government expense only when her presence is “unquestionably in the interest of the federal government.”

In practice, all of her trips with her husband have been deemed to fall into this category.

Even when an official does reimburse the government for such air travel, however, it almost never fully covers the actual cost of flying a government plane. For example, officials such as Sununu typically pay the government a rate equivalent to the cost of a commercial airline ticket plus $1. Such fees inevitably are far below the cost of operating an entire plane.

Some government officials have been known to schedule their official travel so that it takes them to their home states on weekends. Such coincidences usually are considered completely legitimate. Nevertheless, it is highly unusual for the government to pay for an official to fly regularly between his home and his work, as did former TVA manager Stevens.

In Stevens’ case, the TVA agreed to pay for his travel as one of his conditions for employment. A retired Navy admiral with extensive service in the nuclear submarine program, he was hired to improve TVA’s management at a time when the agency faced a crisis in its nuclear power program.

After completing an investigation of Stevens’ case in September, 1989, the GAO concluded that he was probably liable for federal income taxes on the fair market value of the flights.

Even though Stevens’ case was highly unusual, it is not unheard of for federal officials to charter airplanes, as the TVA did in his case. Not long ago, in fact, Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan chartered a small plane when he needed to fly from Pittsburgh to Hampton, Va., in a hurry.

There is no way to tell how many top government officials accept free flights on corporate jets, as Mosbacher does--partly because there currently are no firm requirements that federal officials routinely disclose their travel itineraries.

At the Commerce Department, officials insist that Mosbacher does not accept rides on corporate jets unless he is certain that the company involved has no pending business before department officials. Mosbacher’s spokesman, Gary Foster, says such flights usually are accepted in cases where Mosbacher is scheduled to speak to employees of the company.

In calling for reform of the current system for air travel by top executive branch officials, Wise argues that the officials should be required to disclose all travel on government aircraft, as members of Congress now must do.

Staff writer Holly K. Hacker contributed to this story.