Today I share with you information about Military Overseas Free Flights for College Students to visit! If you are stationed at an OCONUS assignment (Overseas including Alaska & Hawaii) then this perk applies to you! It’s also know an Student Dependent Transportation, Student Dependent Travel, or Dependent Student Travel, because apparently one name would be too easy 😉
The military has a program where it will fly your college student back to visit once a year! Yep one round trip flight for free courtesy of the good ole military! Of course as with all programs there are some requirements and a process to get it all done. However we just did it to fly Boo back for the holidays and it was fairly easy!
You can find more information at the Military OneSource as well but I’ll cover the highlights here, with extra details for those who may be stationed at Spangdahlem. And there is some additional info over at Stripes as well.
First off they will fly your collage student back for one annual round trip in the fiscal year. This is kinda confusing so you can read of the official regs here the Student Dependent Transportation is in section U5260
Here are the ‘rules’
*The military member must be stationed overseas accompanied WITH their family. The student also needs to be command sponsored.
*The student has to be a dependent of the military member.
*The student has to be unmarried, under 23 years old.
*The student has to be enrolled in an accredited college and have proof of enrollment.
*The student has to attend college full time, which is at least 12 credit hours.
If your student fits under these requirements you can go to the MPS and get the required forms to fill out. You’ll also need to submit proof of enrollment for your student with the forms as well.
After submitting the forms (around 2 weeks) you’ll get their orders and then you can book their ticket.
For Spangdahlem:
At the MPS building when you enter there will be a set of shelves on the right that will have these (and many other) forms. You need to complete these forms and return to the 2nd floor of the MPS office to get Student dependent travel orders.
At the end of October Mr. B filled out the forms that he had from the MPS office and turned them in with a copy of his orders and proof of enrollment to get Boo’s flight. We were able log into Boo’s school and print off the needed enrollment letter.
About 2-3 weeks after submitting the forms Mr. B got an email with the student dependent travel orders. Then he took them to SATO travel to book the ticket. A week prior to Boo’s arrival he went and picked up the tickets from SATO and paid with his Government travel card. After Boo flies back he’ll submit a travel voucher and get it paid off the government travel card.
So if your visual like me these are the steps:
- Fill out the forms from MPS
- Turn in forms with a copy of your orders & proof of enrollment
- Receive email with student dependent travel orders
- Take student dependent travel orders to SATO to book airline ticket
- Pick up ticket one week prior to arrival, email to your child to print
- Enjoy spending time with your college student!
There is some rule about them having to fly from the closest airport to their college but you can have them look into other options. We wanted our son to go a bit further to an International airport to get a direct flight. When they were pricing flights for him them found that making him fly from a close airport was going to cost $3000 but flying him from the International airport would only be $1300 so they allowed him to fly from the International one. So it’s worth checking into if you need to.
So really the process was fairly easy to do and didn’t take too long, although I would always recommend getting all the paperwork and such done awhile before the flight is needed, as with all things military 😉
I’m pretty excited that Boo will get a free trip home once a year!
We personally chose to have them fly him back at Christmas time when the the tickets are more expensive and we will fly him back for the summer.
Have you used this program before? What did you think?
It’s called dependent student travel 🙂 and it is a nice benefit for families with college-aged children.
Thanks for the info I was able to find the official document for Dependent Student Transportation, I will be adding into the information above.
The official name of this program is Student Dependent Travel program.
Awesome info! I’ll be sharing with a friend who really misses her kiddos far away in college. But most importantly… you are old enough to have a kid in college?! You look so young!
Aww, thanks! I absolutely am old enough to have one in college 😉 This is an amazing program and we are using it for the first time this month!
This works for civilians that are on Return Agreement Travel (RAT) orders just like military members. This is great info.
Thanks for the info! I was told that civilians got something similar but wasn’t sure of the details!
Thank you so much for this info! I’ve been a MilSpouse for 23 years and there are so many benefits I didn’t know about. Our daughter is entering college so this will be a blessing. Also thanks for the tip on using this benefit at Christmas and flying them home yourself with less-expensive summer fares. And, so sorry to be a spelling corrector (I try not to) but collage and college are homonyms that spellcheck won’t detect. Collage is a piece of art using various materials and images, while college is what you’re referring to here: university. But thank you for your efforts and your wonderful blog!
Ha, ha yes I know the difference between the 2 words…now if I only had a grammar check because even when I re-read the posts before publishing I don’t always catch those errors 😉 I’ll fix the error 🙂 We successfully used this during this Christmas break and it worked great! Looking forward to using it next Christmas break!
Oh and the other reason we chose summer is that that it is easier for Mr. B to take leave and he could easily fly Space-A back to get Boo and then fly back together so that is an option to which would be free. It would require Mr. B to fly back to get him and then again to take him back but that could work out because Boo may be moving into an apartment and Mr. B could help him get that done and set up. It’s great having several options to choose from 😉
Do reservists qualify for any of these awesome benefits
Hi there! You’d have to check the regulations in the link posted as I’m not familiar with reservist benefits.
FYI, the former Joint Federal Travel Regulations were updated and consolidated effective 1 October 2014. Your link should go to the new regs at http://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/travelreg.cfm.
Thanks so much Kate! Updating the link now!
Is there a minimum stay required? Very excited to try this next year.
As far as I know there isn’t a minimum stay, this is our first time using it, but your best bet would be to use the link above to see the ‘regs’ or ask your local MPS office 🙂
This is all great info. But, what I can’t figure out is will they fly her FROM overseas TO college to begin with? I get that she can come home (back to overseas) once a year, but I can’t figure out for sure if I or the military pays for her to go to college the first time . . .
Yes, they will pay for her (but not a parent) to go to college but that will count at the 1 flight for the year. We chose to fly our son back Space A so our whole family could go back to the States and so that we could use it to fly him back to Germany for Christmas. They also get 350 lbs of stuff they can ship or mail back as well, one time.
Great information! Do you know if this applies to military spouses, or if another program like this is out there for military spouses? My husband is stationed OCONUS while I’m on the mainland for graduate school. He’s currently deployed, so I’m trying to find a funding option that will help fly me out to his duty station for his homecoming ceremony when he returns.
Sorry, this does not include military spouses. It’s for dependent students who are under 23 and enrolled full time in collage, who have been command sponsored, and have PCS’d to the Overseas duty location with their Sponsor.
Your best option would be to see if is OCONUS location offers the one time Space A trip for for a one time round trip visit to his duty station.
You can find the letter here: https://www.amc.af.mil/Portals/12/AMC%20Tvl%20Pg/Unaccomapanied%20Non%20Cmd%20Sponsored%20(May%202018).pdf?ver=2018-05-15-140426-807
Hope that helps!