Dependents Now Allowed to Travel Without Deployed SM

We have written extensively about Space-A travel on this post.  It’s a great benefit and how my wife and I afforded a honeymoon to Europe back in 1988.

Last January the Committee on Military Compensation had recommended a change to Space-A travel regulations to allow unaccompanied dependents to use it if their Service Member was deployed for over 30 days.  The policy was officially changed this month and the document detailing it is attached here.  Sorry that the statement and sample letter are a little crude, but I had to copy it from the pdf sent to my Soldiers.  I think you have enough to put together the required letter verifying that the dependent’s SM is deployed.

This is a cool development.  I know that on both of my R&Rs from OIF, I had my family fly out to meet me, first tour at Frankfurt and second tour in Sydney.  Coming from Anchorage, it would have been fairly easy for them to get a Space-A flight to Rhein Main AFB in Frankfurt, but that wasn’t an option and I ended up using a ton of United miles to get them there.  Admittedly, they probably enjoyed the UA flight more, but I think of all those families who don’t have a big mileage account and this will really help them out.

We can’t forget that we still have Service Members deployed around the world even though they are not the massive numbers of OIF/OEF.  Personally, my command has about 100 Soldiers deployed to Djibouti on any given day.  Get the word out about this new benefit.  I noted that I still haven’t seen it on the AMC website.