Excessive travel expenses frequently have been a target of those charged with watchdogging federal goverment costs. Twice in recent months the finger has been pointed at the Federal Aviation Administration. The situation warrants a congressional probe to either crack down on alleged wasteful practices or clear the agency. Rep. Jack Brooks, DTex., recently released a report by the General Accounting Office which indicated the chief of the FAA and other agency officials cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars by traveling on an expensive government airplane instead of relying more heavily on cheaper commercial flights. Brooks, chairman of the House Govemment Operations Committee, quoted the GAO report as finding that the FAA “is wasting a large part of the $5.5 million spent each year to operate the 17 airplanes it now owns or leases for its evaluation, currency and training program.” Use of agency planes – including the expensive Jetstar which allegedly costs $3,070 an hour to keep in the air “frequently involved the FAA administration, other agency VlP’s and their families,” the GAO study declared. “Such flights could have been accomplished more economically by using available commercial flights.” GAO further criticized FAA plans to spend $17 million to acquire more planes. An agency spokesman, Ed Pinto, defended the FAA and said the GAO report did not take into consideration “the irregular schedules of FAA officials and the non-availability of commercial aircraft to meet these schedules.” GAO asserted that 83 percent of the 169 FAA headquarters passenger flights from October through December 1981 at a cost of $448,000 went to destinations served by commercial airlines. The report said commercial flights would have cost only $111,000, a savings of $337.000. The FAA travel abuse charges should not be dismissed lightly. These should he probed along with alleged inconsisten-; cies elsewhere in government as part of a “tightening up” on un-” necessary federal travel. V. Meantime, the avia-” tion agency would do well to follow Brooks’. advice to “give a higher priority to mandating use of commercial flights as a means of cutting costs.”