pareekbharat86 wrote:Federal law prohibits businesses from reimbursing any employees for the cost of owning and operating a private aircraft that is used for business purposes. Thus, many American companies themselves purchase private aircraft. The vast majority of the business aviation fleet is owned by small and mid-size businesses, and flights are strictly for business purposes, with mostly mid-level employees on board. These companies and their boards of directors are in full compliance with the law and with what is best for their businesses.
Which of the following can be most properly inferred from the statements above?
a. The Federal law in question costs businesses money.
b. Most executives would rather fly on company owned planes than on commercial airlines.
c. Large businesses usually have their executives fly first or business class on commercial flights.
d. Upper level executives are less often in compliance with the law.
e. By not receiving any reimbursement for these flights, the mid-level executives on board are complying with the law.
OA is E.
Source- Manhattan Practice Test
Bharat,
I'm happy to help with this.
First of all, notice this is an inference question. The GMAT loves to ask about inference on the CR & RC. Here are a couple blogs about inference on the GMAT:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/inference- ... rehension/
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-criti ... inference/
In general, on the GMAT, a good inference is a statement that absolutely must be true, given that the statements in the prompt are true. There's absolute no doubt, no extra assumptions, etc.
Now, let's look at the answer choices here.
(A) The Federal law in question costs businesses money.
Hmmm. Does buying private planes cost more than reimbursing employees using their planes? We would have to know a great deal more to decide this, so this is not a good inference.
(B) Most executives would rather fly on company owned planes than on commercial airlines.
Hmmm. The argument is about complying with the law. What folks would rather do is not relevant, where the law is concerned. We don't know whether the executive would prefer to fly on company owned plans, or whether the company chooses this for the executives because it is cheaper than flying all of them first class.
(C) Large businesses usually have their executives fly first or business class on commercial flights.
Hmmm. This prompt tell us about what "small and mid-size businesses" do. We don't get information about what large businesses do. Maybe they fly first class, or maybe there's another legal option that is not discussed here. We don't know.
(D) Upper level executives are less often in compliance with the law.
We don't know this at all. All the prompt tells us is what the "mid-level employees" employees do to comply with the law. We don't know what upper level executives do, and whether or not they comply with the law.
(E) By not receiving any reimbursement for these flights, the mid-level executives on board are complying with the law.
There is no doubt about this. The prompt tell us that, "These companies ... are in full compliance with the law ...". The executives are on board company planes, so would be no reason to reimburse them (they would only be reimbursed if they used their own planes, which is against Federal Law). Therefore, the executives, in not getting reimbursed, would have to be in full compliance of the law. There's absolutely no doubt about this point. That's what makes this an excellent GMAT inference.
Of course, MGMAT always writes questions of exceptionally high quality.
Does all this make sense?
Mike
