Oddly, I don't think a lot of this stuff really accounts for the complexities in air travel.
Like I literally couldn't rent certain types of cars ... and the no cars.... all in the name of saving money.
But I could take a taxi everywhere for 150% of the cost of car rental (at least) because you still had to get from A to B.
The end result was "don't check that box!" but any other box was ok even if it did the same thing or worse.
For my trip, the flight would've been about 6 hours (direct!) and cost $600 on a foreign airline. On the cheapest US carrier, the flight was about $850 and took 10 hours due to a layover. When you take hourly rates into account, it easily cost the government an extra $1000 for me to travel on the US airline.
I wish I could've taken the direct foreign flight and just sent United a check for $250. Would've been a win/win for everyone— the American airline gets its corporate welfare without any of the costs they incur when someone actually gets on their plane, and I wouldn't have had to waste 4 hours of my life each way sitting in an airport to satisfy a dumb law.
I've even seen identical itineraries -- one under a US flag carrier and the other under a foreign flag -- with a mid-3-figure price difference. The airlines know what they are doing.
Call your congresspeople.
Definitely seemed like these middleman agencies were a solution to a problem faced by the finance team.