New Delhi, Nov. 22: Fasten your seat belts, babus. Air travel expenses during holidays are the government’s latest target as it girds up to tackle the global financial crisis.

After curbs on official tours, the Centre has now ordered all its officials — across ranks or entitlements — to fly only on the cheapest economy class tickets available while utilising their leave travel allowance.

The new rule, which has left several bureaucrats fuming, came into effect on November 10 through a finance ministry office memorandum aimed at meeting the “objective of expenditure management in view of the current economy measures”.

The order has come just over two months after the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations that saw significant salary hikes.

Till now, central government officials were eligible for the same travel arrangements during holidays that they are allowed during official trips, based on their rank.

The cabinet secretary — India’s top bureaucrat — and all other secretaries are allowed business class travel on domestic routes and first class tickets for foreign trips made for official purposes.

Officers of the rank of special secretaries, additional secretaries and joint secretaries are allowed business class travel on domestic and international routes.

Lower ranked officials are allowed economy class travel, but have the freedom to select the flight of their choice.

The finance ministry order, however, makes it clear that “in so far as travel by LTA is concerned... the cheapest economy fare ticket will be allowed, irrespective of entitlements of such officers to travel while on tour”.

Technically, even under the new rule, officials can choose destinations so that the cheapest economy class fare effectively exhausts their LTA as any unutilised amount cannot be encashed.

But many officials travel to pre-planned destinations including, most commonly, hometowns. So a secretary who may have earlier flown business class with his family to the Andaman islands can now only fly economy class on the cheapest flight available.

Some officials are calling the new order “unreasonable”. They also allege it is not clear. “How am I to know which is the cheapest flight that day? Suppose there is a cheap flight leaving in the middle of the night, am I expected to take that instead of one scheduled at a reasonable time,” asked one senior bureaucrat.

The order follows a slew of measures taken by the government earlier this year to tackle the global financial meltdown that has seen leading economies like Germany slump into recession.

In June, when the country was battling the rising inflation that preceded the economic slowdown, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had written to all his cabinet colleagues requesting austerity.

He pleaded against tours involving air travel by ministers or officials unless absolutely necessary.

A number of ministers cancelled planned trips following Singh’s letter.