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Air France-KLM is seeing a gradual revival in business travel as companies are starting to send employees to in-person meetings and conferences following a hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic. “It’s really coming back” on French domestic and North Atlantic long-haul flights, said Anne Rigail, head of the carrier’s French arm, at a press conference Tuesday in Paris. “The past two months have shown recovery of some large global corporate accounts.” Air France-KLM said last week that surging demand for travel would drive a return to profitability this summer, with corporate trips back to about 70% of normal levels across the North Atlantic. Business-class and premium-economy long-haul trips provided a significant portion of profit margin for network carriers before the health crisis -- and it remains unclear whether it will come back as before. “Every week we have a bit more,” Rigail said of travel for business reasons. “It’s a lot of corporate team events and business negotiations. You can’t do everything on Zoom.” The carrier is confident business travel will come back in North America “at a rather high level,” she said. The company on Tuesday unveiled a E180m refurbishment of a dozen Boeing 777-300 jets that will include 48 full-flat business-class seats made by French supplier Safran SA and a roughly doubling of premium-economy seats to the same number. <br/>

Korean Air and CJ CGV are facing complaints from some of their employees, due to their reluctance to build up their workforces, despite the country's moves to transition to managing COVID-19 as endemic, according to industry officials, Wednesday. Amid the rapidly increasing number of air travelers and cinema audiences in recent weeks, their employees pointed out that continuous overwork resulting from a staffing shortage could even cause problems with taking care of customers in case of emergency. "Korean Air has resumed services that had been simplified during the pandemic, but it has yet to expand its cabin crews," a Korean Air employee wrote last month on Blind, an anonymous chat app for verified employees. "Because there are not enough flight attendants to guard the emergency exits, it is difficult for us to cope with air rage, medical patients and other emergency situations." Data compiled by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport showed that the number of international air travelers rose 259.8% year-on-year to 644,000 last month, following the introduction of the quarantine exemption for fully vaccinated arrivals. Incheon International Airport also said that the average number of daily passengers soared to 29,298 between May 5 and 8, up 347.4% from the previous year. <br/>