Ryanair chief predicts full recovery for business travel

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary expects business travel to make a full recovery from the pandemic, marking him out as one of the most optimistic figures over the future of a lucrative part of the industry that has been wiped out over the past year. O’Leary said he expected corporate travel to return to pre-Covid-19 levels by 2022 unless the pandemic unexpectedly worsened and vaccines did not allow people to travel freely again. “All of these predictions business travel is dead . . . they generally always prove to be wrong,” he said Wednesday. His confidence stood in contrast to several other figures in the airline industry, who have warned that the successful adoption of video conference technology such as Zoom meant the business travel segment would take a long-term hit from the pandemic. Shai Weiss, Virgin Atlantic’s CE, said that he expected a 20% reduction in the coming years, while Jeffrey Goh, CE of Star Alliance, the world’s largest airline group, forecast up to a third of trips would disappear. In normal times, 30% of Ryanair’s passengers were flying on business, with another 30% visiting friends and family and 40% travelling for leisure. O’Leary expected a “small decline” in company executives travelling around the world for internal meetings, which he thinks will be lost to video conferencing.<br/>