Premier Ewart Brown does fly first class on the public purse, his press secretary clarified yesterday.

Arnold Minors told The Royal Gazette on Monday that Dr. Brown "never flies first class or, at least, he hasn't flown first class where it has been paid for by the taxpayer to my knowledge".

But he explained yesterday: "Upon further checking, I now know that the Premier travels business class or first class."

His comments came after figures released to the House of Assembly revealed that a series of ten overseas trips taken by Dr. Brown over the course of nine months cost taxpayers $265,000.

The Opposition described the foreign visits as a "world tour" that needed to end and Bermuda Democratic Alliance's Michael Fahy said: "It is worth reminding everyone that this is the people's money being spent."

The total airfare for Dr. Brown's flights alone came to more than $36,500 — with his airfare for a combined trip to DC and London coming to almost $12,000.

Critics say the numbers are too high at a time when Bermuda's economy is struggling in the face of a worldwide recession and when Civil Service heads have been ordered to cut all non-essential foreign travel and book only economy flights.

But could the bill for Dr. Brown's international trips — taking in four US cities, three continents and two island countries — have been any less?

The Premier visited Boston, Miami, Washington DC and London twice and went to New York, Guyana, Anguilla and Copenhagen once between May last year and January.

His trips as Tourism Minister were booked using C-Travel and his Cabinet Office travel was dealt with by Meyer Travel. Cabinet Secretary Marc Telemaque explained: "Some years ago the Government determined to share its business among travel agents and ministries have governed themselves accordingly."

We decided to log onto travel website Expedia.com and replicate the Premier's itinerary for the same nine-month time frame in 2010/11 to see if it would be possible to do the journeys on a shoestring.

The cheapest return flights we found, travelling economy class, gave us a final total of less than $10,000 — hardly peanuts but not even a third of Dr. Brown's airfare bill.

Many will argue that it is not fitting or appropriate for the leader of a country to be travelling economy — so we also looked at the business and first class fares.

Flying business class, we got a total bill of less than $24,000 and, for first class and business class combined, the total came in at just under $29,000.

The biggest difference in price was for the DC/London trip last September when Dr. Brown attended the Congressional Black Caucus and Labour Party conference.

The Premier's airfare came to $11,905 for the multi-destination journey — but Expedia could do the same destinations at the same time this year for little more than $1,000, flying American Airlines economy.

Of course, our comparisons by no means constitute an exact science. Flight prices fluctuate and costs are often higher if a booking is made at the last minute, as must sometimes be the case with Dr. Brown's business trips.

Airfare can also vary depending on the popularity of a route at a given time, especially when large-scale events are taking place.

Dr. Brown sometimes flew on a Friday — usually the most expensive day to travel — so we also chose Friday flights for those destinations.

Overall, we found economy fares that were less expensive than the amount paid for Dr. Brown's flights for nine of the ten trips.

But we were beaten on an October visit to New York for which the Premier's airfare was just $180; the cheapest fare we found on Expedia was $342.

For six of the ten trips, we found a cheaper business class price. First class fares were trickier to find as it is not always available on airlines travelling directly from the Island to the States.

But for four of the journeys — to London/Copenhagen, DC/London, Guyana and DC — we found less pricey first class fares.

The Premier visited Anguilla last November, for a pre-Overseas Territories Consultative Council meeting, at a cost to the public purse of almost $3,900.

He was accompanied by Senator Marc Bean, whose air fare came to a little more than $5,000.

We failed to find flights at the same time this year for the Caribbean island so had to use airfares for March as a comparison, with the cheapest economy ticket costing about $1,000.

Neither opposition party wished to comment yesterday on whether the Premier ought to fly first class. Mr. Minors said he had no further comment.