The market for business class travel, which has been in free-fall since the start of the recession, could take at least five years to recover, the head of British Airways’ American operations has said.
Premium rate passengers, first and business class, have traditionally been BA’s lifeblood. But Simon Talling-Smith, executive vice president for BA in the Americas, said that with nearly 70 per cent of businesses slashing their travel budgets and with companies increasingly moving executives into economy class or relying on video conferencing instead of face to face meetings, airlines had their work cut winning back that business.
"BA’s view is that it will take quite a long time, potentially more than five years, before the full value of the business market returns," he said.
"Right now [businesses] are putting more people into economy class. Our business and first class business volumes have fallen by around 15 per cent, but economy volumes have fallen by about 1 per cent [for the six months to June 2009]. One could reasonably guess that a certain number of business class customers are down trading to economy."
Plenty of time to get your licenses done and build hours
