LSU Paid $37,120 for a Trip That Should Have Cost About $27,000

The Tiger Athletic Foundation paid $37,120 for three days of chartered flying at the end of January, according to its disclosure to the LSU Board of Supervisors. Of that, $11,955 was a second invoice for a flight it had already bought. Both charges went to Executive Aircraft Charter Service on the same day. Both name the same six passengers: Lane Kiffin, three staff members, and his children Layla and Knox. Only one aircraft ever left the ground.

Lane Kiffin@Lane_Kiffin𝕏Jan 25, 9:55 PM10 min after landing at Tampa

The trip itself was a recruiting swing through Florida, and Kiffin documented it as he went. A six-passenger Citation in Flightline First's fleet came across from New Orleans on the evening of Jan. 25, left Baton Rouge at 8:09 and was in Tampa by 9:45. Ten minutes after landing he posted from the ramp. The photograph shows Alabama's team plane parked in the same hangar, registration legible, midway through a Florida recruiting tour of its own. It had beaten him there by an hour and 42 minutes. Neither school announced the trip.

Lane Kiffin@Lane_Kiffin𝕏Jan 26, 5:16 PM70 min after landing at Boca Raton

Monday was Tampa's schools, then a short flight south. He posted from a hallway at Jesuit at 2:08, the jet carried him across the state at 3:22, and by 5:16 he was posting a Boca Raton sunset. The aircraft stayed the night.

Lane Kiffin@Lane_Kiffin𝕏Jan 27, 10:54 AM

Lane Kiffin@Lane_Kiffin𝕏Jan 27, 12:50 PM

Tuesday morning he went to the schools by road while the jet stayed parked. He posted from American Heritage at 10:54 and from Miami Carol City Senior High at 12:50, working south through Broward and Miami-Dade the way recruiters do, school by school.

Lane Kiffin@Lane_Kiffin𝕏Jan 27, 2:01 PM

The jet followed at 1:21, a 22-minute hop to Miami Executive, and by 2:01 he had posted from Miami Central, seven miles further on. The aircraft met him at the bottom of the circuit.

Lane Kiffin@Lane_Kiffin𝕏Jan 27, 6:32 PM25 min after landing at Tallahassee

Tallahassee closed it out. The aircraft landed at 6:07 that evening, his post followed 25 minutes later, and the jet was home in Baton Rouge before nine.

All of that flying is public record, which makes the trip straightforward to price: about seven hours and 49 minutes of billable time over three days, plus two crew overnights, handling at five stops and federal tax. At published rates for this class of aircraft, that comes to between $26,700 and $28,400. LSU's $25,165 invoice sits inside that band. It is priced normally, and that is what makes the second charge visible. The extra $11,955 is not padding spread through a bill. It is a separate invoice for Baton Rouge to Tampa, the leg the trip already included, and public flight records show no second aircraft on that route that night or in the two weeks around it.

The vendor prices by the aircraft and the day rather than by the hour. Three weeks earlier the same company charged the foundation $17,956 to hold a jet in Houston for 34 hours over the Texas Bowl, and $9,612 for a turboprop that flew the same route as a three-hour turn. It publishes no rates and no cancellation terms, so what LSU agreed to is not on the public record.

That leaves the second charge with several possible explanations and nothing in the report to choose between them: a cancellation fee genuinely owed on a booking overtaken when the trip grew, a superseded booking billed anyway, or a duplicate paid without reconciliation. Both charges are marked taxable, which means the foundation treated part of this recruiting travel as a personal benefit to the coach. If that flag feeds a calculation, the second invoice went into it too. What can be said is that $11,955 was paid for a flight from Baton Rouge to Tampa, and the only flight from Baton Rouge to Tampa was already paid for.