Google Executives Got Discounts From Government on Fuel for Private Aircraft Google executives received an unfair and inappropriate discount on jet fuel purchased from the government for personal flights on their nine private aircraft, according to a report released on Wednesday by NASA's Office of the Inspector General. For six years, H211, a company that manages aircraft owned or leased by Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and its chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, paid between $3.3 million and $5.3 million less than market rates for fuel supplied by the Defense Department, according to the report. The arrangement resulted "in considerable savings for H211 and engendered a sense of unfairness and a perception of favoritism toward H211 and its owners," wrote Paul K. Martin, NASA's inspector general. He called it "a misunderstanding," rather than "intentional misconduct." He advised that NASA and the Google executives consider "options to remedy this situation," but did not describe what those would be. Ken Ambrose, an executive at H211, wrote in an email, "We received a copy of the report yesterday and are currently reviewing it." A Google spokeswoman referred requests for comment to Mr. Ambrose. The arrangement began in 2007, when Google executives started leasing space at Moffett Field, a former Navy base that is minutes from Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. and is managed by NASA's Ames Research Center. H211 pays $1.4 million a year to rent 70,000 square feet, where it stores the Google executives" nine aircraft, including a Boeing 767, two helicopters and a fighter jet. In exchange for using the airfield - which is generally closed to other private jets or commercial aircraft - H211 agreed to permit NASA to use its aircraft for scientific expeditions. Those flights were permitted to use discounted fuel provided by the Defense Department. That is the only fuel available at Moffett, and when Google executives used their planes for business or vacation travel, they also received the discount. Yet just 59 flights, a quarter of the flights flown between August 2012 and July 2013, were NASA science missions, while 170 were private. Since 2009, NASA has flown more than 200 flights to collect climate and earth science data using H211 planes at no cost, which saved the agency hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the report. The discounted fuel did not cost NASA anything, but might have cost state and local governments tax revenue, according to the inspector general, whose findings were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Google executives have been paying market rate for fuel for private flights since September, when allegations that they had received an inappropriate discount first surfaced. Their lease at Moffett Field ends in July. An earlier version of this post attributed a report to Michael Wholley, NASA's general counsel, and Calvin Williams, director of NASA's asset management division. That is incorrect. The report was written by Paul K. Martin, NASA's inspector general.