The Contract is poorly written
By the contract: Pilots are permitted to use surface transportation between "commercial locations", or between a "residence and a field airport/operations area". Field airport and operations area are not defined in the contract.
The only limitation is that you cannot expense transpo between any location and your "Base" - which is defined as the "Airport".
The huge problem here: as long as you do not involve the actual airport property....you are legal by the contract. The limitation is with the Expense Reporting software that will not let us use any identifier other than MEM. How far away from MEM must you be to file an expense?
I am legal to travel from my home to the Olive Branch airport and expense the cost....but I am limited by the software that has no code for Olive Branch. If I am in Montana, and travel to a small local airport....I just pick a code airport that is "closest" and get reimbursed all day long.
The radius of acceptable distance to define your "domicile/base" is half way to the next closest airfield in the Expense Report filing system. This is severely limiting our contractually guaranteed usage of bank funds.
The union should address this with the company to allow pilots to exercise the contract language as written. Any location outside the property lines of the actual airport are fair game - we just need a proper code when filing.