Analysts: Business travel hasn't improved in over 2 months
During a typical year, this would be the time airlines see traffic trends shift from the busy summer travel season to the fall, in which business travel takes a larger role.
That calendar shift will be problematic for airlines this year, as corporate travel has yet to return in any meaningful way. In fact, the sector hasn't shown any improvement in months, according to one analyst group.
While leisure travel bookings were down just over 50 percent year-over-year for the week ending Aug. 23, corporate bookings were down in the 87-88 percent range, according to a research note from Bank of America analysts earlier this week.
"We are only a couple weeks away from moving out of peak leisure summer period and into the more business-heavy fall, and domestic corporate bookings have shown no improvement since mid-June," the analysts said in the note.
As COVID-19 spurred the migration of millions of employees to a work-from-home environment, some wonder if 2019 levels of business travel will ever be reached again as tools like video conferencing become commonplace.
