Business travel will come back: United Airlines chief

It is a mistake to believe that business travel demand will be fundamentally altered by the Covid-19 pandemic, even if its recovery will lag the return of leisure markets, according to United CE Scott Kirby. Acknowledging that his view ”is not the consensus” and that “almost everyone disagrees”, Kirby states during a CAPA Live event Thursday that predictions regarding the “death of business travel” are likely to be proven wrong, and that is ”ultimately” going to come back. “People were having this conversation 20, 25 years ago when video conferencing first started,” he states. “It was wrong then and it’s wrong [today].” Rather, he describes the situation as “a question about human nature”. Business travel “is not transactional”, he explains. “It’s about relationships.”<br/>